Woods playing out the string in a major a rare sight

ST ANDREWS, Scotland - His day was effectively over by the fourth hole, where Tiger Woods needed two tries to get out of a pot bunker. What followed was something rarer still: Woods simply playing out the string in a major.

It's been a half-dozen years since he came down the back nine on Sunday in a Grand Slam event with absolutely nothing at stake. With good pal Lucas Glover in tow, Woods played fast, casually and laughed a lot, looking to all the world like a guy resigned to his fate. Critics no doubt will point to his performance here as more evidence that all those romps off the course sapped nearly all of his strength and resolve on it.

Woods won the past two times the Open stopped off at St Andrews, once by a record margin, and the best he could muster this time around was a tie for 23rd. Coming on the heels of fourth-place finishes at the Masters and the US Open, two other major championship venues where he also won by record margins, they'd have you believe he's become Samson in golf spikes - after the haircut.