Tiger Woods Appears Close To Former Winning Form
Tiger Woods is mending nicely from that fused back. In consecutive events, Woods has finished T2 and T5. And, he was within one shot of the lead on a second straight Sunday. That is until he went OB on the 16th hole. In fact he was one down to Rory McIlroy before that drive. Woods ultimately lost by eight.
The fact he didn’t close the deal might be surprising to his fans, but realistically its almost like winning. Woods is upright, happy, swinging fast, launching drives over 300-yards and his short game prime time ready. Even the missed putts were agonizingly close. Thus he looks as good as anyone could hope for heading to Augusta in two weeks. Oh happy days!
On the ill-fated OB drive, Woods admitted not committing on the shot.
“I was caught,” Woods said. “I couldn’t decide what I was going to do.”
In Woods’ mind, he had three options: “fit” a driver left to right with the shape of the fairway, “bomb it over the top” of the dogleg or just hit a 3-wood “straight away.” He opted for the driver, but after missing right the first three days he sent his ball sailing left.
“I bailed out and hit a bad shot. And that’s on me for not committing.”
The Morning Read’s Alex Miceli offers up a good summary of what nearly happened on Sunday at Arnold’s place.
Tiger Woods: “If you would have asked me at the beginning of the year that I would have had a chance to win two golf tournaments, I would have taken that in a heartbeat.”
Woods has shown that his game is competitive enough for an Augusta National course where he hasn’t won since 2005, before the layout was “Tiger-proofed” for a second time. But Woods has missed the past two Masters events and hasn’t even putted competitively on bentgrass greens in two years.
“I’ve got to see if my [course yardage] book is any good,” Woods playfully mused. “I have a book from three years ago, but I don’t know if they have resurfaced. I think they may have resurfaced three of the greens since the last time I played, but I want to go up there and make sure and then take a look at all my reads on my putts and see if they match my book. If they’re not, then obviously I’ve got to erase and draw some more lines.”
Woods finished T5 in SG-Total but faltered off the tee (-3.596, 71st). He was 2nd SG: Around the green and 8th SG: Putting. Both necessary qualities at Augusta National if you want to contend.
