George Kimball/America At Large: Tiger Woods may, like the rest of us, be guilty of transgressing some of the original sins, but sloth, indolence, and misogyny are probably not among them, which is why Lisa McGonigle's version of The Lady and The Tiger seemed somewhat odoriferous.

Ms McGonigle is a 30-something lady from Stoneham, Massachusetts, and earlier in the summer she signed on as a volunteer for the inaugural Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston which concluded this past Monday.

Shortly before the tournament she learned to her delight that the task to which she had been assigned would involve first-hand contact with the 156 players in the field: she had been nominated to drive one of the buggies shuttling golfers from green to tee over the first two rounds.

It is interesting to note here that the PGA Tour, having come down on the wrong side of the Casey Martin issue a few years ago, found itself in the position of requiring players to use motorized transportation during a round. Even without 25,000 daily spectators clogging the routes, the layout of the new Arnold Palmer-designed course left some pretty hefty hikes from green to tee, particularly over the first two rounds when competitors were starting on both the first and 10th holes, and it was in the interest of pace-of-play that vehicular transport was deemed expedient.

Ms McGonigle says that Friday's first round passed without incident, but that midway through Saturday afternoon, as Tiger, who had started on the back side, came up the 18th fairway, she was ordered to vacate her spot behind the wheel.

"There are extra carts for Tiger's group because he's Tiger," muttered McGonigle. "(Robert) Allenby (who was playing in Woods's game on Saturday) got in the cart next to mine, and then the gentleman in charge told me the man running Tiger's security had said Tiger didn't want a woman driving his cart. It was "a security issue".

Near tears, McGonigle was heard near the press tent muttering about "that spoiled brat" having ruined her tournament, and the next thing anybody knew the tale had made its way, as a news item, into Sunday's edition of the suburban MetroWest Daily News.

By Monday, McGonigle had been reassigned to shuttling disabled spectators back and forth between the handicapped seating areas. Whether this was a normal rotation on the duty roster or reflected official disapprobation remains unlearned, but we do know this much: Lisa was on the phone to both major Boston dailies that morning, and by noon, before Woods had even teed off, an interview describing her tale of woe was playing once an hour on the most powerful radio station in New England.

McGonigle's version of events seemed improbable for several reasons. Even if Woods did, as she claimed, have "a phobia about women drivers," experience has taught us he'd have so thoroughly insulated himself from the episode his fingerprints would have been untraceable.

Unlikely as it seemed, it also occurred to us that it was at least possible that there had been a genuine security issue. Although they're not widely publicised, Tiger still does get the occasional death threat, and while those (so far, anyway) can usually be written off as crank calls, if he'd gotten one on Saturday somebody might have deemed it prudent to ensure that whoever drove him from the 18th green to the first tee was licensed to carry a gun.

Efforts to confirm McGonigle's version weren't particularly helpful, principally because both tournament officials and Tiger's official entourage were caught completely off-guard by the charge.

"It's the first I've heard of it," said Deutsche Bank Tournament Director Jay Monahan.

"It's ridiculous," said Mark Steinberg, Tiger's personal agent at IMG.

"There are so many things going on out there and Tiger's so focused that he wouldn't know who was driving a cart anyway. It could be me, it could be you, it could be her. He wouldn't even notice. It's completely laughable."

Monahan and Steinberg did huddle together in the press tent while a WBZ radio producer played a tape of the station's interview with McGonigle, in which she claimed Tiger's refusal to ride with her had been relayed to her by one of Woods's security goons, whom she identified as "Chris". Except Tiger doesn't have a security man named Chris.

Woods didn't learn of McGonigle's charge until he finished his final round, a 67 that put him in a seventh-place tie behind tournament winner Adam Scott. "That never happened," said Tiger, who seemed genuinely stunned.

Of course, even had the accusation been true, Woods, Steinberg, and Monahan could reasonably been expected to deny it, which is why the story continued to have some legs despite an apparent absence of corroboration.

It wasn't until we were on our way out of the course on Monday evening that a more likely explanation emerged. According to a Deutsche Bank publicist, an hour or so before Woods finished his first nine holes on Saturday, McGonigle had a minor mishap in which she grazed a tree on her return trip from the first tee. There was no damage to either cart or driver, but it did occur to those in charge of the player shuttle service that, given the human swarm flocking about Woods's every movement, hitting a tree would be the least of the problems if Lisa strayed from the cart path again.

"Maybe," it was suggested, "we should get somebody else to drive Tiger." We can't swear this is what happened, but the supposition is it's at least possible that one of her fellow volunteers tried to spare McGonigle's feelings by describing it as a "security issue" instead of telling her the truth, which is that they didn't trust her driving the cart through a mob of potential litigants, but in the end it seemed to matter little. As night fell across Massachusetts, her interview blaming Tiger Woods was still playing on the radio.