Top guns showing little stomach for Tiger battle

TIGER WOODS first and the rest nowhere – that’s the confident prediction from Minnesota as the clock runs down to the start of the 84th US PGA Championship over the 7,340-yard, par-72 Hazeltine National GC.

Play gets under way this morning with Woods a runaway 15/8 favourite and not even recent Open champion Ernie Els given a decent chance of upsetting calculations.

It’s not just that Woods is by a distance the best player in the world, or that he confirmed his current well-being in winning the Buick Open at the weekend, or even that a venue demanding extremely long and accurate striking seems to be made specially for him.