Time for Tiger to Begin Countdown to 19

Urging Tiger Woods to win a major championship would seem laughably unnecessary, like telling Albert Pujols to get a big hit or Ari Gold to scorch Lloyd's earlobes on Entourage. Still, I would like to see him pocket one this week for the first time in 13 months. That way, he'll avoid any ticking-clock syndrome that might set in if, oh, he's in his mid-30s and remains five majors short of passing Jack Nicklaus.

He wouldn't want anyone crying "SLUMP!!!" as a certain someone did earlier this decade, when 10 events and 2 1/2 years passed without a major victory. I even began calling him Eldrick, figuring he wasn't Tiger anymore.

There's no reason Woods shouldn't win his fourth Claret Jug at Turnberry, by the Firth of Clyde on Scotland's west side, where arguably the finest links course in creation awaits the greatest golfer of his time at the British Open. His surgically repaired left knee no longer sabotages his game. The field is shy of reliably strong challengers, with Phil Mickelson tending to the horrific double-whammy of his wife and mother simultaneously fighting breast cancer and two-time defending champion Padraig Harrington struggling through his swing alterations (question: why does a man who won the last two majors of 2008 mess with his swing?). Tiger is controlling his own swing, striking the ball well and finding markedly better distance and accuracy off the tee. His putter, a puzzling bugaboo at the U.S. Open, was working for him at the AT&T National, where he held off young bucks Hunter Mahan and Anthony Kim by rolling in a late 20-footer.

And he has the added motivation of trying to keep up with his friend and razor-commercial colleague, Roger Federer, who captured his 15th Grand Slam victory at Wimbledon -- one more than Woods' 14 majors. "Great job. Now it's my turn," Tiger texted Federer after the epic win over Andy Roddick. As he related the story after his recent win at Congressional, he heard the laughter of media people and knew what they were thinking.

"Not 15. I meant win today," he said, smiling.

Even his strategic decision not to show up until Sunday at Turnberry, a course he is seeing for the first time, doesn't hold water in any Woods-will-lose arguments. Considering the Alisa Course hasn't hosted the British Open since 1994, few of today's players have much experience there. And don't we all remember what happened when Tiger showed up, sight unseen, at Royal Liverpool three summers ago? He shot 18-under and won in the memory of his late father, Earl. He chose to do his prep work last week in the decidedly un-Scottish like climate of Orlando, where he and swing coach Hank Haney couldn't replicate the wind, rain and rocks but did work on the creativity conducive to strong links play. "The whole idea is to have everything dialed in, feel comfortable with my swing, short putting, everything, then start getting the feel for how to play over there," he said. "Then I have to do more prep work on the greens and make sure I truly understand how to play the golf course and have a game plan come Thursday."

Of course, Woods lives for the links. He used to pray for rain during his college days at Stanford so he could flee his dorm room and play in the slop. "I used to pretend I was playing at the British Open," he said. It's thinking man's golf, maneuvering through the elements atop the coast. Early weather reports suggest a surprisingly mild four days, but you sense Woods still wants it sloppy, though he once shot 81 in a monsoon at Muirfield. "It's just making sure that you can flight your ball and making sure you can maneuver it both ways efficiently, because you don't know what kind of weather you're going to get," he said. "You're going to get years like we had at St. Andrews (in '05) where it's perfect, or you can get a Muirfield ('02) day or what they had last year at Birkdale. You just don't know, and you have to be able to be confident in controlling your golf ball and maneuvering it all around and feel like you can do it efficiently."

Rather incredibly, Woods used his driver only once at Royal Liverpool, in the first round. With two-irons, he preferred to angle and thread rather than blast. "An entirely different game," marveled Harrington. "If the weather is nice, yeah, Tiger could definitely do that (this week). That performance was remarkable. Nobody else could have played the way he played that course. It was phenomenal -- his control, distance control, his ball-striking, to hit it in to those greens from those distances. If Turnberry gets hard, he will be able to do it again."

I speak for the masses -- and TV networks -- in saying I miss Tiger Woods winning majors. It's still the most glorious sight in sports, witnessing history in a blood-red shirt on Sunday, and it would be very cool to see a duel down the stretch. But other than two British golfers, third-ranked Paul Casey and Lee Westwood, I'm not seeing anyone who fits the description. Sergio Garcia would crack under the pressure and is still getting over being dumped by Greg Norman's daughter. The young Irishman, Rory McIlroy, isn't quite ready. And even the two Englishmen would face the crippling burden of dueling Woods in their homeland. Usually in sports, playing at home is a benefit; at the British Open, it's a death sentence. Said Westwood, already sounding wobbly: "It's an intense week. If you could just go in there and not talk to anybody, it would be a massive result. Unfortunately, it's the Open Championship. And I'm British."


So why not Tiger? Why not No. 15? Happily married and thrilled with fatherhood, he's at a place in his life, nearing 34, where he can slip into a cocoon and rattle off five majors in the next three or four years. The only thorn in his side at the moment is Jim Brown, who continues to rip Woods and Michael Jordan for not being involved in social activism. "There are one or two individuals in this country that are black that have been put in front of us as an example. But they're basically under a system that says, 'Hey, they're not gonna do a certain thing,'" Brown said on HBO. "Yes, that disappoints me because I know they both know better. Yeah, I know they both know better, OK. And I know they both can do better without hurting themselves. You know what's so interesting about Tiger to me? If it was just a matter of me looking at an individual that's a monster competitor, this cat is a mamajama; he is a killer. He'll run over you, he'll kick your ass. But as an individual for social change, or any of that kind of [stuff]? Terrible. Terrible. Because he can get away with teaching kids to play golf, and that's his contribution. And in the real world, man, I can't teach no kids to play golf and that's my contribution, if I got that kind of power."

Yes, Woods could be more involved with the Obama administration, which is embracing sports and athletes like the White House never has before. But at the moment, Tiger doesn't want to save the world, as his father once suggested he would. He wants to hit the golf ball straight, wear green jackets and hold Claret Jugs.

We haven't thought about it much, but when he reaches No. 19, it will be a powerful day for anyone who cares about sport, life and racial progress. It's time to start moving toward that number.