This is one record Tiger would like to disown

Kidding or not, Tiger Woods said last week there were a million reasons why he'd rather win a tournament than the Ryder Cup.

On Friday, he added two more.

Back-to-back losses in opening-day matches dropped the best player in the world to 3-8-1 for the Ryder Cup. It's the kind of record that defies spin. U.S. captain Curtis Strange didn't even try.

"Sometimes," Strange said at the end of a strange day, "there is no answer to a question."

Not that it stopped people from trying to find one.

Some argue it's because Woods always gets every opponent's best shot; others, that he's been handed too big a burden in events like the Ryder and President's Cups.

Still others insist team competitions don't fit Woods' definition of greatness (Quick: What's Jack Nicklaus' Ryder Cup record? Or Ben Hogan's?) and that he doesn't bring the same intensity to them as he does to the majors.

Cynics point to the lack of a paycheck, a theory Woods fueled last week when he said it meant more to win the American Express Championship, with its $1 million purse, than the Ryder Cup -- even though he later claimed it was said in jest.

Paul Azinger, who played with Woods in a best-ball loss to familiar foes Thomas Bjorn and Darren Clarke, offered this explanation for Woods' vulnerability: It was the way their European hosts set up the golf courses -- here and at Valderrama, Spain, in 1997 -- to take the driver out of Woods' hands.

"Here, there's nothing he can do," Azinger said.

"People think that to Tiger-proof a golf course, you have to lengthen it. That doesn't Tiger-proof it. If you force Tiger to hit it the same distance as everybody else, then you've Tiger-proofed it."

Mark Calcavecchia, who played with Woods in an alternate-shot loss in the afternoon to just-as-familiar foes Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood, took the opposite tack. He thought the Europeans ambushed Tiger on the greens.

"We made some putts," Calcavecchia said, "just not quite as many as they did."

Woods didn't give either excuse so much as a sniff.

With good reason. He and Azinger combined to shoot 63. They just happened to run into Bjorn and Clarke on a day when the two European stalwarts shot 62.

"I've played well and gotten beat in this thing and I've played poorly and won matches," Woods said. "In match play, with just 18 holes, anything can happen. It's not a 72-hole event, where usually attrition wins."

He is right about this much: Send Woods out by himself in any four-round tournament anywhere and at some point, the 150 or so opponents arrayed against him feel like they're wielding garden hoes.

But hand him a partner in a team event, limit it to one round, and you know how Superman felt when somebody slipped Kryptonite into his boot. Helpless.

In singles matches, Woods is respectable, but just barely. He's 1-1 at the Ryder Cup and 2-0 at the President's Cup, which uses the same format but pits U.S. players against their counterparts from everywhere but Europe. In best-ball matches, he's a combined 1-8; in foursomes, 4-4-1.

By luck of the draw, European captain Sam Torrance wound up sending out four players against Woods who had beaten him at least once in one format or another. But Woods gave them a helping hand, missing back-to-back putts inside 4 feet in the afternoon match that led to a stretch of three bogeys in four holes and and easy point for the Europeans.

"He doesn't feel real good right now, and that's good," Strange said. "He's disappointed, which is good. He probably feels as though he let the team down a bit, which is good. It makes you come back hungrier the next day."

How deep those failures have shaken the best player in the world is anyone's guess.

Woods came out Friday morning determined to reverse the record. By the end of the day, his eyes were smoldering and the deficit was even larger.

Woods' Ryder Cup record has become his albatross, a mini-version of Phil Mickelson's failure to win a major. But his stubborn streak is already wider than any fairway. He'll be back at the course madder and more determined than ever to start turning this thing around.

"You go with your horses," Strange said, explaining his decision to bring Woods back in the first set of foursome matches Saturday. "If you get beat, you get beat. But you go with your horses and that's what I intend to do."

Besides, it's not as if Woods would let him get away with anything else.

Jim Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press.