Woods’ return lasts two days, misses cut
Tiger Woods’s return to Riviera Country Club lasted just two days as the 14-time major champion missed the cut in the Genesis Open, where Graeme McDowell and Patrick Cantlay shared the lead on Friday. Woods’s eight bogeys included three in a row on the back nine as he battled to a fiveover par 76. “I really didn’t play well today,” Woods said. “I missed every tee shot left and I did not putt well, didn’t feel very good on the greens and consequently never made a run.
“I knew I had to make a run on that back nine, and I went the other way.”
Woods had a 36-hole total of six-over par 148 -- four shots outside the projected cutline as darkness fell and 13 shots off the pace set by McDowell and Cantlay.
McDowell opened his five-under par 66 with three straight birdies at the 10th, 11th and 12th. He followed that with back-toback bogeys but grabbed four more birdies to surge up the leaderboard.
Cantlay, who shared the overnight lead with Tony Finau, had five birdies in his two-under par 69. He launched a string of three straight birdies with a near holein-one at the par-three sixth, his 15th of the day.
American Sam Saunders was seven-under with three to play when darkness fell with a handful of players on the course.
Ryan Moore closed out a three-under par 68 in the fading light to reach the clubhouse on six-under par 136.
Former US Open winner McDowell has just one top-10 finish worldwide in the past 18 months. Without a victory since 215, he has plummeted to 219th in the world rankings and arrived at Riviera off three straight missed cuts to start the season.
He said his game for the past several months had been much better than those results indicated. “All I’m missing is a couple little numbers and a little bit of confidence,” McDowell said. “I’m really excited to be going into the weekend of the tournament on the business end of things.”
Woods has no such weekend excitement to look forward to.
The southern California native grew up playing Riviera, and indeed played his first US PGA Tour event here as a 16-year-old in 1992. But he’s never won in 11 prior appearances, and hadn’t teed it up on the classic course west of downtown Los Angeles in 12 years.
LOS ANGELES: