Yellow for snapper then red

THERE are probably only marginally fewer pictures of Tiger Woods in circulation than there are grains of sand on the shores of the Firth of Forth.

Few, however, have upset the equilibrium of the most composed sportsman on the planet quite as dramatically as two snapped by a trigger-happy Japanese photographer on the first hole at Muirfield yesterday as the Woods circus rolled into town in typically controversial fashion.

''Pissed off,'' was Woods' inelegant though understandable verdict to millions of television viewers after recording a one-under-par total frustratingly punctuated by a flurry of putts which lipped, grazed and jumped over the hole and a cameraman who clicked at the most inopportune of times.