Silver lining for Woods

TIGER WOODS may have lost his Western Open crown last weekend but there was a silver lining for the world number one.

Woods, who finished tied for seventh at the Cog Hill Golf and Country Club, was trying out a new graphite driver and though things did not click immediately he was a far happier man by the end of the tournament.

And with the Open less than a fortnight away that could spell trouble for the likes of Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson.

“I’m hitting out of my shadow now and that’s nice,” said Woods. “I hit it well and it’s going a lot further because it’s going straight. It is also coming off faster, which means it has less spin on it. So it should go straighter.”

One thing Woods was not ready to do was discuss the overall state of his game as he prepares for Royal Troon.

“I’m very happy with it,” he said.

Asked if he could expand on his reply, Woods declined. “You all saw me play on Friday and saw I wasn’t swinging the club very well.

“But I started hitting better (on Saturday), and it was just a matter of not hitting it close enough. I was putting well, too, but when you have 20 and 30-footers all the time it’s hard to make a run at the leaders.”

Woods used his stinger shot a few times in the final round, causing some to speculate he was working on it for the Open which he won in 2000.

Meanwhile, Luke Donald still has a chance of making Europe’s Ryder Cup team after Sunday’s final round 67 brought him a third-place finish in the US Tour’s Cialis Western Open.

The America-based English youngster now lies 13th in the Ryder Cup world points list but needs to break into the top five to guarantee his place at Oakland Hills Country Club in September.

Captain Bernhard Langer will select the top five from the world points list and the top five European points list and then add two wild cards of his own choice.

Donald’s impressive performance in the Western Open lifts him into 59th place in the world rankings, just behind fellow countrymen Ian Poulter (58) and Justin Rose (57).