IN GAME OF LIFE, TIGER COULD USE A BIT OF `FLUFF'; SOMEONE LIKE HIS FAITHFUL CADDY IS NEEDED TO STEER HIM AWAY FROM STARDOM'S PITFALLS.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

Mike ``Fluff'' Cowan, we can see. He is Tiger Woods' trusted adviser on the golf course.

Cowan has been caddying longer than Woods has been drawing breaths. During a round, Cowan never is more than a couple of club lengths away from his client, leaving him perfectly poised to share with Woods the benefit of his decades of experience.

Cowan is not afraid to clear his throat and speak his mind if he thinks Woods is courting trouble. Not coincidentally, Woods has had few missteps on the golf course in the year-and-a-half since he became a full-fledged member of the PGA Tour.

After making five cuts in 14 pro tournaments as an amateur BC (before Cowan), Woods, 22, has finished in the money in 30 of 31 PGA starts since turning pro (not counting this year's rain-suspended Pebble Beach tournament, which has yet to be completed). He has won six PGA-sanctioned events, including the 1997 Masters, and has pocketed $3,116,227 in official earnings.

Cowan's jurisdiction, though, extends only so far. When Woods steps outside the gallery ropes he's handed off like a jumbo jet that passes from one control tower's air space into another's. It's in the transition that Woods has encountered pockets of turbulence that seem entirely avoidable, begging the question: Who is steering him clear of the out-of-bounds markers of decorum and the hazards of hubris?

Woods continues to chilly dip his reputation despite his handlers' assertions that he is learning from every mistake. Last month, after falling 11 strokes behind Ernie Els at the halfway point of a tournament in Thailand that he went on, amazingly, to win, he responded in a salty manner when asked by a press officer to meet with the media. This, after being lambasted for declining to meet with reporters after a lackluster first round at last year's U.S. Open.

He relented after the woman - a person one of his handlers said Woods knew well enough to be profane around in the name of puckishness - threatened to repeat his response to the waiting reporters. Was his an isolated act of petulance or an emerging pattern?

In a Gentleman's Quarterly cover story last April, Woods told off-color jokes, never imagining they'd find their way into the article.

After having felt firsthand the discomfort of having offhand comments boomerang, we would have thought he would have suffered Fuzzy Zoeller's foolish remarks more charitably. After Woods' 12-stroke victory in the Masters, Zoeller referred to the then- 21-year-old as ``that little boy'' and advised him not to request ``fried chicken . . . or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve'' at the 1998 champions' dinner.

After Zoeller's comments were aired on CNN a week later, the veteran tried repeatedly to reach Woods through Woods' agent Hughes Norton.

Nearly a week passed before Woods let Zoeller off the hook in such a way Zoeller could have been forgiven for feeling as though he was still dangling. Bev Norwood, the vice president of the golf division of International Management Group, which also employs Norton, explained the delay away by saying Woods wished to review a videotape of Zoeller's comments before speaking and it took time to procure a copy.

To which we wonder, didn't anyone in Woods' camp stop to contemplate the hypocrisy of being anything but gracious given the magazine with Woods' offensive comments graced the newsstands at the time Zoeller made his remarks?

Norwood wouldn't address that but he did allow, ``maybe in retrospect it should have been responded to earlier.''

We're also curious if Norton gave any consideration to turning the getaway car around on the autumn day in 1996 in which he spirited Woods away from one obligation and straight into a maelstorm of controversy. Norton was the one who drove Woods to the airport after the golfer withdrew from a tournament in Columbus, Ga., and left town on the eve of a dinner that was scheduled in his honor.

Perhaps Woods was too tired to think straight - after all, he cited fatigue for his decision to pull out of the tournament in Pine Mountain that followed the dinner in which Woods was to receive golf's version of the Heisman Trophy. A contrite Woods would attend the re-scheduled banquet later in the year but a chink in his charisma had been exposed.

It was there for everyone to see again last April when Woods blew off an invitation to join President Clinton in honoring Jackie Robinson in New York because he had a vacation to Mexico planned.

In your early 20s it's not uncommon to have trouble seeing the cause for the inconvenience. But shouldn't there be somebody in Woods' corner grounded enough to step to the fore, when necessary, and save the golfer from himself?

When Woods was growing up, that person was his father Earl. At Stanford it was his coach Wally Goodwin.

And now?

Norwood filters the sea of solicitations for Woods' time. It's a full-time job. Last year, Norwood said he had to turn down 1,500 written requests.

``I think one of the things the public fails to understand about Tiger is the tremendous demand upon him for his time,'' Norwood said. ``If Tiger were to quit playing golf and do nothing but what people want him to do, he still would not have time to fulfill all the requests for his time.''

Hey, there's no such thing as a lunch free from scrutiny when you are, in your father's words, ``The Chosen One,'' put among us to ``do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity.''

Woods has said, ``I wish the media would be a little more lenient and not so nit-picky about everything I do.''

That would be a whole lot easier to do if Woods' handlers were a little less lenient and more nit-picky about everything he does.

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PHOTO When Tiger Woods was growing up, his father, Earl, provided him with direction. Now that he is a pro and faced with the perils of celebrity, who will emerge to show him the way?

Jamie Squire/Allsport