Tiger in hunt despite erratic round
Don’t say he’s back. Or that’s he’s not.
Tiger Woods could play Augusta National in his sleep, in a daze, in a blizzard or with a ball and chain cuffed at his ankle and still get around in a respectable number of strokes.
See where he is at close of light Sunday. Then we’ll talk.
A day before the opening round, Woods tweeted, “I’m ready,” except he wasn’t. Not completely, anyway.
He sprayed practice shots all over the range, then pulled his first tee shot into a stand of trees on the left, a bad habit that plagued him most of the day. He scrambled from the pine straw off the first fairway, then holed from 8 feet for a one-putt par, another habit that kept the round from tipping over into disarray.
Say this much for Woods: He’s rarely boring. At No. 9, he pulled his drive so far to the left that it wound up in the walkway between the ninth and first holes. A kid got to the ball first, as it rolled to a stop, bent over and looked at the logo. Then he pulled his father in the opposite direction just before a crowd of fans surged toward the errant drive and staked out a spot to watch.
The little guy might have been the only person on the grounds who didn’t seem much interested. But Woods salvaged par from there and by the end, his seven one-putts offset the six fairways Woods missed with his driver, as well as the two drops he took because of unplayable lies.
That left him effectively stuck in neutral, at even-par 72.
“I just felt my way around today, I really grinded, stayed very present. And you know,” Woods said, “I know how to play this golf course. I think it’s just understanding what I need to do.”
He won two weeks ago at Bay Hill — his first real tournament in 30 months — and arrived here saying, “Everything is headed in the right direction at the right time.”
That suggested the remodelling of his swing under his latest coach, Sean Foley, was nearly complete. Not so fast. Turns out some of the changes Woods employed under his previous coach, Hank Haney, managed to creep back into his game and get in the way Thursday.
“Same old motor patterns,” Woods said, referring to his problems off the tee. “Now I’m struggling with it all the way around with all the clubs.
“The Hank backswing,” he added a moment later, “with the new downswing.”
But in the moment after that, Woods lauded himself for his “commitment to each and every shot, what I was doing, my alignment, my setup, everything was something that I’m excited about.”
His recent results have been middling at best, and the inconsistency suggests that just like this latest swing, Woods’ psyche is still very much a work in progress. He was at his best when he was one of the most cold-blooded competitors on the planet, and we haven’t seen that person since he dusted off Rocco Mediate in a playoff with one good leg to win the 2008 U.S. Open.
No one knows, perhaps not even Woods, whether that guy still exists. Barring a missed cut, all of us could have the chance to find out on the back nine on Sunday.
Still, Stenson’s stunning snowman — after he’d made two frontnine eagles en route to 6-under par, three shots in the clear — let everyone in the Masters field who was in red figures feel a lot better about themselves.
Feeling especially good was world No. 3 Lee Westwood of England, who finished off his round of 5-under 67 just ahead of wind and light rain that seemed to be the leading edge of yet another thunderstorm.
“This is a golf course I love playing. I hit pretty much every fairway and 16 greens in regulation and rolled some nice putts in from 10-15 feet, which is productive,” said Westwood, who was three shots back when Stenson self-immolated, and within a couple of hours he had the solo lead, by a stroke over 2010 British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen and Sweden’s Peter Hanson.
“It’s nice to get off to a good start, and have a platform to build from,” said Westwood, who was talking about the round as a whole, but could have been referring to four straight birdies on the front nine — and it might have
The eight on 18 started with a hook into the trees, a punch shot through a bush, a poor iron shot off the pine straw, and an airmailed wedge over the back of the green, from where he took four to get the ball in the hole.
“Finishing with an eight, I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”
Lawrie, who took a decade to stop feeling defensive about the triple-bogey seven Jean Van de Velde made on the final hole at Carnoustie to help hand the Scot the 1999 Open, now has benefited from an even bigger gaffe — if not quite as comic — by a fellow European.
But as at Carnoustie, when his final-round 67 was blurred by the Frenchman’s memorable meltdown, Lawrie played terrific golf Thursday, eagling both par-5s on the back nine, including a slippery downhill chip-in from 50 or 60 feet away at the 15th.
Also at 69 were aging Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez, Italy’s Eduardo Molinari, Ben Crane, Jason Dufner and Bubba Watson.