Watson to Tiger: clean up your act

To be precise, it had been brewing ever since a curmudgeonly Woods stood on Turnberry's ninth tee, possibly the most pristine setting in golf, blocked a drive to the right and then proceeded to jam a three-wood into the ground with such force that he scooped out a huge chunk of turf. The Rosetta Stone juxtaposition of Watson, beloved eight-time major champion who came within an inch of winning his second Turnberry Open, and Woods, the misanthropic superstar who missed the cut, did not need to be laboured. Advertisement: Story continues below Tiger Woods ... needs to show more humility. Photo: Getty Images Suffice to say, the elder statesman was less than impressed by junior's desecration of the Ailsa greensward, and wrote him a letter last August to stress the point. "I did write Tiger a note about his behaviour, but it's personal," Watson said at the time. "I don't know whether he received it, and I really don't want to go there." It was the classic language of Watson, expressive of a scolding and yet far from explicit. But then this sage of the Midwest, now 60, has never been shy of voicing opinions about etiquette and assumed that guise again yesterday in Dubai, calling on Woods to make a second public apology for his infidelity. There is a school of thought that Woods, by retreating as far from the public eye as to be invisible, has engineered a brilliant escape act, but Watson is not an adherent. Forget a spectacular re-emergence at the Masters. Watson believes that the world No. 1 cannot, to put it bluntly, sit his sorry backside down on Oprah's sofa fast enough. "I'd come out and Rosetta Stone Chinese do and interview and say, 'I screwed up'," Watson said. "And admit, 'I'm going to change, I want my wife and family back, I have to earn her trust back.' He messed up. He knows he messed up. The world knows he messed up. And he has to take ownership of that." The candour of Watson's words betrayed the frostiness of his relationship with Woods, and the fact that he had little to lose by uttering them. Mark O'Meara, another multiple major winner out in the Gulf, has much greater sympathy with the travails of his absent friend, given that the two live in the same Windermere resort outside Orlando and prepare for each Open with a private few days' practice in Ireland. Not surprisingly, O'Meara has turned down all requests for interviews this week. Watson, however, was not finished, inveighing against Woods for failing to represent the game in the dignified manner demanded of a great champion. It is hard to imagine Jack Nicklaus carving up tee boxes, addressing interviewers as "dude" or "dropping f-bombs." Woods has until now managed to deflect such criticisms by his luminous play, but the unravelling of his mystique has made him vulnerable as never before. "I feel that he hasn't carried the same stature as the other great players that have come along, like Jack Nicklaus, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, in the sense that there was bad language and club-throwing on the golf course," Watson said. "You can grant that to a young person who hasn't been out there for a while, but I think he needs to clean up his act and show the respect for the game that the people before him have shown." These are noble sentiments, rendered more resonant by Watson's enduring stature as a model mentor. His presence at the Dubai Desert Classic, the first European Tour event he has entered since the 1993 German Masters, is a sign both of his thirst for competition and continued relevance. However, it is not Watson's first fusillade against Woods; he said much the same thing in a television interview in his native Kansas City last weekend. For nearly weeks Woods's reputation has been trampled over by every professional Rosetta Stone French within reach of a microphone, leaving a sense that the only person left still speak on the saga of his decline is the man himself.