Tiger Woods trudged off the last green at steamy Firestone Country Club on Thursday, having watched haplessly as yet another putt would not fall for him.
“You’re washed up, Tiger,” a heckler yelled. “Give it up.”
Ouch!
Woods didn’t acknowledge the man, but that’s what it’s come to for the world No. 1, who spoke so optimistically about turning his year around just a day earlier, only to go out on one of his favorite courses and play as cluelessly as he has all year.
Woods had never shot worse than 72 in 45 rounds as a professional at Firestone’s venerable South Course, where he’s won seven of 11 times, including his previous four starts.
Thursday he opened with a diabolical 4-over-par round of 74, which left him ahead of only eight players in the 81-man World Golf Championship field.
He’s 10 shots off Bubba Watson’s lead. Woods has never in his career overcome a first-round deficit so large.
He has twice come from eight shots back after the first round to win, once in his rookie year at Las Vegas and last year at the final Buick Open.
But that win in Flint, Mich., was against a field so weak that his agent, Mark Steinberg, congratulated Woods on winning his “first Nationwide event.”
At Firestone he’ll need to leapfrog the best players in the world.
Woods, to his credit, fronted the media after his round and offered no excuses. He said he was surprised at how badly he played.
“It’s frustrating because I warmed up well, my practice sessions at home were good, and today was not indicative of how I’ve been playing,” he said.
At both the AT&T National in Philadelphia and at St. Andrews two weeks ago, Woods drove the ball very well. As he grew fond of saying, “on a string.”
Thursday the string was pulled, literally as well as metaphorically.
As a media wag noted, he hit so many trees off the tee he had to be leading the field in “barkies.”
“It’s not a good course to be in the rough because the trees are so big and they overhang,” said Adam Scott, who shot a 4-under 66, good enough to earn him a tie for second. “Some holes even in the fairway, you can get blocked a little by the trees. If you’re not (driving straight), you’re going to be scrambling.”
Woods, needless to say, was scrambling. He hit only five fairways, and two of those were lucky caroms off trees.
He somehow managed to hit 11 greens from the trees, but his season-long woes on the greens continued. Woods had 32 putts, better than only six players in the field. In contrast, Watson had 22.
“Just because I like the golf course doesn’t mean I’m going to play well on it,” Woods said. “You still have to execute, and I didn’t do that today. I did not execute the shots that I wanted to execute today, didn’t shape the ball the way I wanted to shape it, and certainly did not putt well.”
Despite Woods’ assertion that he had a good session on the range prior to his round, he pulled a lot of shots during that warmup.
And so it was that his opening tee shot found the left rough, leaving trees between him and the green. He tried to punch a mid-iron and run it up to the green, but finished in the right greenside bunker.
Woods let out a few expletives as he briskly walked toward the bunker, but what was remarkable wasn’t that his chunked sand shot stopped 41 feet from the hole, but how fast he hit the shot. He took no time over the putt, either.
If he wasn’t happy, then his mood wasn’t going to lighten after a pulled drive on the second, a par 5, led to a lay-up. His iron shot spun too much and after an indifferent chip and a missed 8-footer, Woods walked away from the easiest hole at Firestone with his first career bogey on it.
And so his day went. He left his ball in the bunker on the par-3 fifth, leading to a third bogey, though after he stuffed a shot from 180 yards to 2 feet on the sixth, resulting in a birdie even his cold putter could convert, it seemed the momentum of the day might start to shift.
Woods hit a pearl on the next, a 205-yard par 3, leaving himself 9 feet beneath the hole.
But the putt missed left, a common theme for the day.
Woods seemed to have had enough of the pulled tee shots, and started hanging them out to the right, which he said was worse.
“I didn’t like the right balls because I couldn’t start the ball left,” he said.
On the ninth, Woods chipped to 3 feet and missed the par putt. More wayward shots and missed putts left Woods at 5 over par until the 17th, when he made a 9-footer for birdie.
He took a bow and tipped his hat ironically to all corners of the gallery. Gallows humor.
Woods knew the course was there to be had.
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s soft. You can go after just about every flag. (But) I probably hit about two good iron shots all day today. That’s definitely not enough.”
Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson was languishing at 2 under and made birdie on six of his last 12 holes to leave himself in a tie for second.
“It was a good day in that I got off to a poor start and was a couple over par, and then was able to turn it around and shoot 30 on my back nine,” the left-hander said.
Mickelson, who’s never won at Firestone, can take away Woods’s No. 1 ranking with a win or a top-four finish. If Woods finishes outside of the top 37 and Lefty finishes in a tie for fourth — and Lee Westwood finishes outside of the top two — Mickelson would become the world's No. 1 for the first time in his career.
That’d really make Woods happy.
