Tiger's 73: Situation Normal On The Greenside Release Patterns
/Tiger Woods won't be happy with a 73 on a day where 40 players broke par (including old Stanford buddy Tom Watson, notes Golf World's Dave Shedloski). Considering how bad he was, the round is an enormously positive comeback score.
Yes, there was a violent drop-kick on the 9th tee and another horrible chunk from the 1st fairway where the drive ended up (at least he had a sense of humor about it). I walked the front nine with him and several thousand of his fans and the return sure seemed like a huge victory. The change in his demeanor, the overall quality of his shots, the lack of any apparent physical limitations and an absence of release-pattern mishaps makes this a strong comeback.
By the way, the majority of you who voted for Woods to shoot from 73-75 win the Grand Prize.
Now, if Tiger would just give Nick Faldo a hug, all will be right with the world.
After the round, Woods blamed his putting and the green speed for his troubles. From Bob Harig's ESPN.com report:
"I felt good," Woods said. "I felt like I hit the ball well enough to shoot 3-under par. Our entire group [Jimmy Walker and Jamie Donaldson] was really struggling at the greens. We were talking about how slow they were today. We had a hard time hitting the putts hard enough. You've got to give respect to the downhill putts, but they weren't rolling out."
That said, Woods had just a single three-putt -- at No. 1 for the first of his four bogeys. He hit 10 of 14 fairways but missed badly at the ninth, leading to a bogey. He hit 11 of 18 greens, but none of the four bogeys were due to poor chipping.
**Adam Schupak of Golfweek.com with a detailed report on some of the key moments for Tiger, including insights from both Woods and playing partners on what is now the strength of his game, wedge play.
The curiosity factor of how Woods would handle his first chip reached a fever pitch at the third hole when he drove within 10 feet of the green. He faced an easy chip from the short grass. This time he didn’t use a putter or 4-iron as he had in Phoenix. He made clean contact with his wedge but it lacked bite and scooted 18 feet past the hole. It was a missed opportunity. But as Woods likes to say, baby steps. He had another chance to chip at the eighth after crushing a fairway wood over the green at the par 5. After a free drop, his pitch ground to a halt 5 feet from the hole and he canned the putt for birdie. He was back to level par.
“He hit it nice and spinny,” Jimmy Walker, his playing competitor, said.
