Putting woes not worrying Woods
NORTON, Mass. — Tiger Woods said Thursday that he thought he played well in last week’s Northern Trust, his first FedExCup Playoffs event since 2013.
His third-worst putting week of the season erased a lot of good work tee to green, and Woods fell from 20th to 25th in FedExCup points. That means he’s getting closer to The Tour Championship bubble entering this weekend’s Dell Technologies Championship.
The top 70 in the standings after this tournament move on to next week’s BMW Championship. After that the top 30 advance to The Tour Championship, Sept. 20-23 in Atlanta.
Woods said he hadn’t played much golf since Sunday and spent a majority of the time with his kids at home in Jupiter, Florida. He did get work in on the greens, but Woods didn’t seem to think his putting problems in New Jersey were anything to worry about. Just one of those bad weeks.
“Golf-wise, hardly anything,” Woods said. “I’ve just been with the kids, with them doing all their after-school curriculum, all those activities, so I really haven’t got much golf in.”
In his prime, Woods would have been practicing four to five hours a day going into a week like this, along with 10-mile runs and multiple lifting sessions. That was before he had kids, when he was healthy enough to work as long and hard as he wanted to.
“I putted for a little bit,” Woods said. “Not a lot. More than anything it was just getting rest, doing my lifts and driving the car a lot.”
Thursday he showed up with two putters. He started off using the TaylorMade TP Collection Ardmore 3 mallet that went into his bag at the Quicken Loans National, but then was brought a new TaylorMade TP Collection Black Copper Juno, a heel-toe weighted blade.
This is the second of three tournaments for Woods over a three-week stretch, in which he’s hoping to play five tournaments over the course of six weeks, including The Tour Championship and Ryder Cup in Paris.
Woods won at TPC Boston in 2006 and has finished outside the top 11 only twice in nine career starts, including a T-65 his last time playing here in 2013.
This is Woods’ 16th start of the season, and he’s already committed to next week’s BMW. That will make the most events he’s played in a year since 2012.
He has at least two more chances this season to win for the first time in five years, and it’s highly likely he’ll be in the mix this weekend if the ball striking is close to what it was in New Jersey.
The main thing for Woods is that he’s getting experience being in the hunt again.
“The thing for me is just keep getting there in the mix,” he said. “Keep getting there on that back nine with a chance to win. I responded well at Valspar. Made a mistake there at Bay Hill and The Players. Even at the (British) Open Championship. But I learned from those and really did well at the PGA. I’m not going to win them all, but in order to win them you’ve got to be there.”