Our series of behind-the-scenes Open Championship profiles from Royal Liverpool continues with Tiger Woods' scoreboard carrier John Crawford
Dreams might not have come true for Tiger Woods this week at the Open, but he did help one dream come true, when 18-year-old John Crawford carried the scoreboard for the pairing of Woods and Jason Dufner this morning.
“I nearly fainted when I found out last night that I had Tiger’s group,” says Crawford, whose other summer job is working as a greenkeeper at Royal County Down. “He has a real presence about him. He is something else. He didn’t play well today but that didn’t stop all the cameras following him. There were even a lot of people taking pictures of me with my scoreboard.”
“After the round I got to go into the scorer’s booth,” says Crawford, who also carried scoreboards at the 2012 Open at Royal Lytham. “Normally we are not allowed in there, but Joe [Woods’ caddie Joe LaCava] said, ‘Come with me’, and I said, ‘But I not allowed in there,’ and he said, ‘Just come with me’. So that was that. I went in and Tiger signed a flag for me and shook my hand. I told him it was a dream come true for me, and he said, ‘Thanks’. That was really nice, and Jason Dufner signed the flag too.
“Tiger Woods is my idol. I just judge him by his golf, and I think he is very professional. He hit a couple snap hooks today, but it makes you realise that the bad shots of tour golfers can be as bad as your own. Tiger’s putter went cold as well, and it’s the putter that wins you majors, evidently.”
“Ishikawa is a baller, so he is,” says Crawford, with a comment requiring clarification for this listener. “It means he’s class. He didn’t seem to speak any English, but he is class.”
“The course has been playing very well,” he says. “It was lush at the start of the week but on Friday you could see the yellow patches starting to come through and it was hardening up, so I think the rain last night did it some good. The course played really well today and the greens have been so good.”
