I didn’t ask him what happened.”Maybe it was the supervisor of the unit of demons who attach themselves to Woods the moment the Ryder Cup appears on the golfing horizon who clicked the camera. Perhaps it was the mere presence of the world’s number one which over the day filled such recently notorious under-achievers as Clarke and Westwood with such dramatically revived spirit. Whatever the reason, these unhappy coincidents further ravaged a Woods’ record which is becoming nothing less than a chart of disaster.Bjorn saw off Woods and Azinger with a beautifully controlled 20-foot putt on the 18th green, and through gritted teeth the Tiger showed a degree of grace.Said Woods: “It was disappointing we lost because we really played well today. And to shoot that low and end up losing the match is a little disappointing, especially when you birdied the last two holes We sucked it up and we got it done They played great They got up and made a lot of putts Thomas played beautifully on the last nine. I think he shot about 5-under par on the back nine so he really played well. It came down to a matter of making as many birdies as we possibly could, and it just wasn’t enough.”As early as the fourth hole, after Clarke, maybe buoyed by his memory of beating Woods in a World Matchplay final, surged to three straight birdies, Azinger had a sense that whatever he and the Tiger did it wouldn’t be quite enough.

“I turned to Tiger,” Azinger reported, “and said, ‘Are they going to birdie every hole?’ But we didn’t talk too much about how things were going. We pretty much tried to mind our own business and do what we needed to do. In the end you just had to shrug your shoulders say, ‘we did great, but they played better.’”Azinger agreed that part of Woods’ Ryder Cup problem was the degree of resistance he faces from players who know that over the course of four days in a major championship they would have little chance of mastering the range and the depth of the Tiger’s game. There is also the relentless matter of Tiger-proofing which, Azinger argues has reached new levels here at the Belfry – including the wrecking of the the 10th as potentially the world’s greatest matchplay hole.He said, “I don’t really know what happened in Spain in 1997 – I wasn’t there – but I believe the golf course was set up there to neutralise our power as a team because we were much bigger hitters In Brookline I think Tiger was neutralised a little bit Here, there’s nothing he can do. We have some powerful hitters that are forced to hit irons off every tee Tiger hit drivers off both par-5s.

He’s hitting into a very small area – the guy is forced to play back His strength is his power And, yes, in the Ryder Cup his opponents do get up for him. If I played him I would be be so jacked up to go head-to-head. Are you kidding? It would be great.”For Woods the prospect can be rather less inspiring. There is too much chance in the Ryder Cup, he has said, and too much opportunity for an assassin to come at him, get him, and steal away without the ordeal of a longer examination – the kind Woods likes to conduct on the last day of a major.There is another problem. It surfaced when he made his first appearance in Sotogrande five years ago. His friend and mentor Mark O’Meara was one of those demanding a closer inspection of the Ryder Cup profits.