TIGER TRIAL
Missed cut is blow for Woods
From Derek Lawrenson GOLF CORRESPONDENT IN LOS ANGELES ON America’s Golf Channel they dissected every missed fairway and every other painfully inadequate statistic about his play. If you wanted to find fault with Tiger Woods’s golf at the Genesis Open at Riviera, you did not have to look very far.
Long before he reached the 18th green and an ovation from the 40,000strong crowd that gave you goosebumps, there was no chance of him making the halfway cut, let alone challenging Graeme McDowell at the top of the leaderboard.
Yet what did people expect? A man who has barely played for three years, who has spent longer during that time flat on his back, unable to move, than he has on the practice range, coming straight back out at the age of 42 and competing again?
Let us leave any pronouncements on his game until he has got a lot more competitive golf under his belt than a mere six rounds. His playing partner Rory McIlroy, who finished five shots off the lead after a gutsy round of 69, might have been stretching it when he said Woods was ‘ very close’ to playing well, but he was spot on when he called for patience.
‘Give him a little bit of time,’ he said. ‘He struggled a little more on Friday but he hit enough good shots to know that when he pieces it all together he’s going to be right there. Everyone has to be patient with him, and most of all he has to be patient with himself.’
While the glass half-empty brigade feasted on Woods’s poor second-round 76 for a tie for 116th place as evidence he is never coming back, there was plenty for those alongside McIlroy in the other camp to draw upon.
For starters, there was the simple pleasure of seeing him compete again without his face creased in pain. I must have covered this event about a dozen times but there has never been a buzz like the one over the first two days. On Thursday morning, it looked like a Ryder Cup as Woods’s first hole — the 10th on the card — was lined completely with spectators at the unearthly hour of 7.22am.
Playing on Friday afternoon, the noise was so loud, McIlroy said, that the first thing he would do after signing his card was take a couple of Advil.
The best news of all was Woods committing to play again at the Honda Classic in Florida this week. It will be the first time he has played back-toback tournaments on the PGA Tour in 30 months.
His golf was not that bad, either, even if his stats tell a different story. Woods did not look out of place alongside McIlroy and the USPGA champion Justin Thomas, but simply a golf erin search of rhythm.
McDowell knows all about those things following a horrific 18 months that has seen him register just one top- 10 finish and fall outside the world’s top 200. A second- round 66 was a welcome sight, that left him tied for the halfway lead with gifted young American, Patrick Cantlay.
Englishman Tommy Fleetwood, on his debut in America as a PGA Tour member, shot a 71 to be six behind.