It used to be that taking Tiger Woods or taking the field at a golf tournament was a more or less even proposition.
But while Woods searches for his game, sometimes successfully, other times not very, the field isn’t treading water along with him.
A new generation of golfers, young men not scarred from defeats to Woods, are leaving him behind. After 27 holes at The Barclays, Woods had the lead at 8-under-par. With three rounds completed at sylvan Ridgewood Country Club, he has fallen to 3-under, nine shots out of Martin Laird’s lead and, more to the point, with 21 golfers ahead of him on the leaderboard.
And the majority of them, significantly, are twentysomethings.
Woods started his third round on Saturday with a pull hooked 3-wood that sailed out of bounds over left field.
“Ended up probably costing me a chance to win the golf tournament,” he later bemoaned of his opening triple bogey.
Actually, probably not.
Even if he had made par for the hole, he’d be six off the lead and in need of either a round in the low 60s — minimally, the 64 Dustin Johnson shot on Saturday — or a collapse at the top of the board.
Laird, who climbed from the pay-to-play mini tours to winning on the PGA Tour in Las Vegas last year, didn’t look like he was going to fall apart after carding a 6-under 65 Saturday, his third straight round in the 60s.
The 27-year-old Scot, who played at Colorado State and now calls Arizona home, reeled off four straight birdies after his opening par, added two more on the back nine and kept a clean card.
Johnson rebounded after the disappointment of Whistling Straits, when he was penalized for grounding his club in a poorly-defined sand bunker on the 72nd hole, and has thrust himself again into contention.
His 7-under round left him three off the lead.
“If I can play like I did today, there’s not too much out of reach,” Johnson said.
He shrugged when reminded of the two-shot penalty he was assessed at the PGA Championship.
“There’s really nothing to put behind me,” he said, “I mean, I played good golf. Unfortunate situation. It’s not very hard to let go, though.”
Justin Rose, a two-time winner this year, barely made the cut and thrust himself into the conversation with a clean 65 to get to a tie for fifth.
“I feel actually thankful just to be here,” said the Englishman, who’s looking to impress Colin Montgomerie as he ponders his Ryder Cup picks on Sunday. “I didn’t play particularly well the first two days and had a fortunate chip-in and holed a wedge to survive the cut.
“Having got through the cut line, I felt like I was a little freer out there. I figured that 65, 65 the weekend would go a long way towards winning the golf tournament.”
Jason Day, a 22-year-old Australian with tremendous upside, had four birdies and an eagle but also five bogeys to shoot 70 but is still in the running at 9-under. Adam Scott, who’s hitting it beautifully, is a shot back at 8-under.
Woods, meanwhile, shot over par for the second straight day. His 71 was a mish-mash of good and bad.
He complained about his lack of touch on the greens on Friday, and while he was better with the putter on Saturday, his ball-striking wasn’t anywhere near as impressive as it was on the first two days.
The out-of-bounds swing off the first, he said, came because he got stuck between his old swing and his new one.
“Strictly lack of commitment,” he said. “I wasn’t focused on exactly what I should have been doing, what I’ve been doing on the range, what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks, and it backfired.”
He was pleased, he said, with how he “sucked it up and got it back the rest of the day when it easily could have gone the other way.”
“Hitting a ball like that can derail you, and it didn’t. I got it right back,” he said.
But did he? Woods had a bogey and 10 mostly scrambling pars over his next 11 holes. He just wasn’t hitting it close enough.
He did birdie both par fives on the back nine and hit his best approach of the day into the last, setting up a seven-foot birdie.
But it wasn’t nearly enough. Not when his rivals are shooting in the mid-60s.
Maybe this was never meant to be his week?
He is, after all, just learning a new golf swing under the direction of Sean Foley.
“I’m very excited about what I’m doing, how I’m hitting the golf ball,” Woods said. “But I have to think of the swing because it’s not natural yet.”
As any golfer knows, playing “golf swing” rather than golf is a futile exercise.
Foley, reached at his home in Orlando, said he was proud of Woods for trying.
“The guy’s got big balls to go out there and play ‘golf swing’ like he is,” Foley said. “But, look, the reality is that it’s going to take time for him to make these changes natural. It’s not going to happen overnight.
“When he shot that first round (at the Barclays), I heard all these people saying, ‘Here he comes. He’s back.’ First of all, he’s Tiger Woods. He’s capable of shooting 6-under on any given day, but secondly, we’re dealing with neurological patterns here. He may have the ability to learn things faster than most people, but it’s still going to take a lot of reps.”
Not that Foley says it’ll necessarily be long before Woods wins again.
“I don’t think it’ll take him a lot of time to win again because he’s won a million different ways without flushing it.”
It just won’t happen this week.
