Tiger seeking win, putting stroke with British Open on tap
Tiger Woods is playing the Quicken Loans National for the last time, and so much about this year feels new.
Woods played his first 18-hole round at the TPC Potomac (Md.) at Avenel Farm during the pro-am Wednesday, and it didn’t take long to realize why the course rated as the fourth toughest to par last year on the PGA Tour, behind only three majors.
“It’s certainly a lot more difficult than what I had envisioned,” Woods said. “They’ve got the rough up, fairways in. It’s like a miniOpen here.” Also new: his putter. Maybe. Woods has been struggling with just about every aspect of putting since March, when he made a brief charge in the final round at Bay Hill until tying for fifth. He missed the cut at the U.S. Open two weeks ago, and last week in the Bahamas he began tinkering with a new putter. The one he used in nine holes of practice on Tuesday, and in the pro-am, was a mallet variety.
This is the final edition of a tournament that began in 2007 with high hopes, with Woods as the tournament host at Congressional, held around the Fourth of July with a theme built around saluting the military.
Eighth-ranked Rickie Fowler, who has a corporate deal with Quicken Loans, is the only player from the top 10 competing this week.
He would like nothing more than to end the tournament’s 12-year run by winning for the first time in nearly five years, a reasonable task considering how well he has been swinging the club. The trouble has been getting the putter to cooperate.
“He was away from competitive golf for so long,” Fowler said. “It’s not like you just come right back out and go win a golf tournament. But it’s Tiger. It wouldn’t have surprised me . ... He knows how to win, so I’m not worried about him by any means.”
U.S. Senior Open: On the pitcher’s mound, John Smoltz never shied away from pressure. This week, the man considered by some to be the most clutch postseason pitcher in baseball history finds himself dealing with an entirely new sort of stress.
The Hall of Famer qualified for a spot in the U.S. Senior Open, which starts today in Colorado Springs, Colo. Instead of delivering the nasty stuff, he’ll be trying to avoid it on a Broadmoor East Course that ate up the seniors 10 years ago for this tournament — won by Eduardo Romero, whose 6 under was one of only three scores in the red for the week.
Smoltz understands that his dominance on the diamond does not mean he’ll have the stuff to contend with Bernhard Langer, Vijay Singh and Colin Montgomerie.
“People who know me say, ‘You’re going there to win it,’” he said. “Well, c’mon. Within reality, I want to compete and see how well I can do. If I make the cut, that would be unreal.”
Obituary: Phil Rodgers, a five-time winner on the PGA Tour who became one of golf ’s top instructors, died Tuesday at his home near San Diego after a long battle with leukemia. He was 80.