Woods shoots another 71, narrowly misses gallery

The Associated Press Tiger Woods didn’t entirely hurt his chances in the British Open.

Better yet, he didn’t hurt anyone in the gallery.

Woods still walked away Friday realizing he made it a little tougher on the weekend at Carnoustie if he wants to end a decade without winning a major. A rugged start, a strong recovery, a few putts for birdie, a few he missed for par, and it added to an even-par 71.

“I could have cleaned up the round a little bit,” he said.

He was tied for 29th, six strokes behind leaders Zach Johnson and Kevin Kisner.

The wildest moment on a wet day in Scotland came on the second hole, when Woods hit his drive well to the right on the side of a dune. The grass was deep enough that it was certain to twist the club on impact. Woods asked the gallery to move back because he would have to start it to the right with the golf ball well above his feet.

The shot came out hot and right at them. There was no evidence it hit anyone — no one was hurt, anyway — because the ball at least kept going in the rough.

Woods was thankful. “I was trying to play for the grass to wrap the shaft around there and hit it left, and I was just trying to hold the face open as much as I possibly could. It grabbed the shaft and smothered it,” he said. “I was very, very fortunate that it got far enough down there where I had a full wedge into the green.”

He still made bogey. He made another bogey on the next hole, and just like that he was on the cut line.

Woods answered with a pair of birdies, and it was give-and-take the rest of the way.

“I played a little bit better yesterday,” Woods said of his matching scores for the opening two rounds. “Today wasn’t quite as good, but I finally birdied the par 5.”

He was six shots behind when he finished and figured the margin would be a little wider, which it was. Woods and the rest of the early starters faced an entire round of light rain, while it cleared out for the afternoon.

“It will be a pretty packed leaderboard, and I’m certainly right there in it,” Woods said.