Nervy Ernie under fire

Ernie Els’s commitment to seriously challenging Tiger Woods’s No1 position in golf has been bluntly queried by a prominent American website.

Following Els’s latest collapse in the face of a hard-charging Woods the GolfObserver.com website of leading golf writer and statistician Sal Johnson has spotlighted the weaknesses in the big South African’s game and taken him to task for, basically, running from the fight.

Pointing out that Els had lost the recent Dubai Desert Classic because he had putted so much worse than Woods (needing a total of 121 putts to Woods’s 109 in losing by two shots) states baldly: “The fact is that Els has never been able to play his best when in contention with Tiger Woods. This has happened before.

“The first time was probably the 1998 Johnnie Walker Classic in which Woods made up eight shots on the final round and beat Els in a playoff.

“Over the years it doesn’t matter how good Els has played, he has always had to play second fiddle to Woods. Yes, he won the 1997 US Open and the 2002 British Open with Woods in the field, but I (the author wrote under a nom de plume) can’t remember Els going mano-a-mano with Woods and coming out ahead.

“In a way Els has been historically at the wrong place at the wrong time. If Els could have come around ten years earlier maybe he would of won a half dozen major championships and been the best of his time.

“Els has played a Hall of Fame career, but he won’t go down that favourably in history because of Woods,” GolfObserver concludes.

And there’s also criticism of Els’s tendency to avoid taking on Woods on a more regular basis in the United States.

“We have to wonder if in his flight from Dubai to Delhi to play in the Emaar-MGF Indian Masters, Els reconsidered his three-year master plan to catch Woods. It’s just not going to happen and this (the Indian Masters) week is another example why.

“On top of that, we have to also question if Els really wants to be the best and beat Tiger. If so, why is he going to India and not showing up in Tucson at the end of the month for the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship?

“Yes, it’s a long way to come from London to Tucson for only one match, but I don’t think a player like Tiger Woods looks at it that way. He would go to the moon for a chance to win a tournament in which the best players in the world are attending and I would have thought that Els would have the same thinking.

“But it’s becoming obvious that Els would much rather travel the globe in his jet to events in which someone is paying the jet fuel and the field is easy pickings for him. Hopefully he will be able to bounce back from this Dubai debacle with a victory in India, but if he does want to be the best in the world he needs different results in events in which Woods is in the field.

“And when he has a four-shot lead over Tiger going into the final nine, he is going to have to win and avoid a back-nine collapse.”

This comment is in tune with the thoughts of Els’s supporters – many of them close friends – who question whether the popular golfer’s playing schedule (for instance missing out on playing a tournament at Torrey Pines, the site of this year’s US Open) coupled to his concentration on golf course design militates against him being the golfer he says he wants to be.

Els, on his website, maintains that he “is close” (to his best) but unless, like Bernhard Langer, he finds a way to improve his Achilles heel, his putting, he’s just not going to be competitive any longer. In Dubai putting was the difference between a Woods win and a Els defeat. Woods took 109 putts, compared to 121 for Els. Woods had just one three-putt while Els had two and Woods had 34 one-putt greens compared to just 20 for Els.

One thing is for sure, it’s going to take an even greater effort for him to come back after yet again being floored by Woods and more and more golf fans are questioning whether he has the will, the nerve, to do it.