Tiger Woods takes brief lead at PGA
Tiger Woods, coming off a long frustrating stretch in his career and personal life, and facing the prospect of needing at least a top-15 finish in the toughest of the four major championships for him, took the lead briefly on Thursday before falling back into a tie for 20th place.
The year 2010 was supposed to be a special year for Woods. The first three majors were going to be played on three of his favourite courses: Augusta, Pebble Beach, and St Andrews. He has a combined seven majors out his total of 14 on these three courses as well as multiple scoring records. As well as those three courses, he was due to play the Bridgestone Invitational World Golf Championship event at Firestone where he had reigned supreme, winning seven times in eleven tries.
The results: fail, fail, fail, and fail. The worst of the failures came at Firestone where he finished at +18 and in second last place. This was especially significant because it came the week before the final major of the year, and the toughest one for Woods, the PGA Championship which is being played at Whistling Straits.
Whistling Straits is tougher for Woods because it is littered with hazards: doglegs, dunes, bunkers, cliffs, and body of water called Lake Michigan that happens to be only slightly smaller than the State of West Virginia. These obstacles get in the way of Tiger blasting the ball down the fairways and setting up short irons into par-5 holes. In fact, remove par-5s from all the majors, and Tiger’s record is pretty ordinary.
Starting on the easier back nine in the first round Thursday, Woods was blazing, hitting three birdies and a par in the first four holes and joining Bubba Watson at the top of the leaderboard, the first time he’s been there all year – a rarity for Woods as the season nears to a close.
He then hit a rough patch with bogeys on the 15th and the second holes. He then bogeyed the seventh to go back to even par, but hit an excellent approach to eight feet on the final hole to get under par for the round and rest three back of the leaders with about half the field yet to start their rounds due to a late start because of fog in the morning.
“I played too good not to shoot under par, and it would have been very disappointing and frustrating to end up at even par as well as I played today,” Woods said. “To shoot under par just feels like less than I should have shot for the way I played today, and that’s a good feeling.”
“I played too good not to shoot under par, and it would have been very disappointing and frustrating to end up at even par as well as I played today,” Woods said. “To shoot under par just feels like less than I should have shot for the way I played today, and that’s a good feeling.”
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