"I'm able to get my ball count up"

While Mark Wilson and Matt Bettencourt are leading the Memorial, the focus is on all of the big names rounding into form for the U.S. Open.

Bob Harig reports that Tiger shed some new light on his knee breakdown last year.

A year ago, Woods was among the few who knew that his season was in peril. He had hoped to play the Memorial Tournament following arthroscopic knee surgery just two days after the Masters, but he learned a week before this tournament in 2008 that he had suffered stress fractures in his left leg.

"I practiced way too hard to get ready for this event," he said. "That's when I broke it."

Steve Elling says that Tiger's practices have been more limited than we originally thought:

Only in the past few weeks has Woods been able to bash balls as often as ever, because he didn't want to overstress the knee. He has only recently stopped icing the knee after rounds and instead has been able to adjourn to the range, where he can get post-round work done. Up until last month, he hadn't been able to practice after playing for two years because of his sore knee.

"I'm able to get my ball count up," he said.

Now maybe he can get his win count up, too.

Woods is gradually sneaking up on his standard form, having hit 35 of 42 fairways and 40 of 54 greens, which both rank in the top eight in the field. After starting the day tied for 24th, he moved up to a four-way tie for seventh in a group that includes Ernie Els.

Elling also reports on Geoff Ogilvy's amazing 63 Saturday after his dreadful performance Friday.

"Spend an hour taking out your aggression on a golf ball," he smiled. "It's quality alone time, Geoff time."

It might be Geoff time on Sunday night at this rate, when one Jack W. Nicklaus might be handing him a fat check and a shiny crystal trophy. Ogilvy, who won the U.S. Open three years ago, has already won the season-opener and match-play events, tying him with Zach Johnson and Phil Mickelson for most wins this season.

His results of late have been largely middling, though Friday skewed more toward largely maddening.

"I woke up on the wrong side of the bed," he said. "Everything was getting to me. One of those days."

He took the sour disposition to work, too.

"I don't like carrying on like I did at times yesterday," said Ogilvy, one of the brightest players on tour. "It must have looked silly."

"It's a pretty seamless kind of change."

Looks like there was a new type of rally killer in Geoff Ogilvy's sitdown with what remains of the working press.

First, the rally...Geoff talking about the nuances of the Colonial course changes:

GEOFF OGILVY: Yes, it's actually quite nice that they've made some changes that you kind of keep looking at going, did they change that, did they not change that? It's a pretty seemless kind of change. Most of them I think is better, the course is better for it. A few extra bunkers here and there. The tees, a lot of them they look like they've just gone down a couple of feet which gives it a different look and probably makes it play a little longer in some respects because you are down a little bit. They cut the back of some of the greens, the ball is going to run away from a few more greens than it did before. All in all, pretty good changes. I would still like to see a couple of trees in a few places come out of this course. Apart from that, it's one of my favorites courses and probably nearly every guy in the field, if you polled them, it would be in their Top-5. And they haven't done anything to damage that by changing the course. A lot of times they change courses these days, that can happen. So fortunately that probably improved it. It's nice.

Q. Hi, Geoff, I'm doing interactive marketing for the tournament this week running the Twitter for the guys. I have a question from one of the followers. What part of your game is feeling best this week and what part of your game might not be feeling the best that you need to focus on to be successful this week?

The followers taking priority over the writers? Oh I smell an emergency meeting of the GWAA Directors! Wait, the new prez writes for the PGA Tour, maybe not!

Later on, Ogilvy on how the changes will impact play:

GEOFF OGILVY: In some cases for sure. I don't know if the fourth tee went back, but it feels like it's longer than it was. It definitely went down three or four feet. I think which makes it almost feel uphill. But that's always been a hard hole. The third is going to play a little trickier off the tee. It looks exactly the same, but the bunkers are 20 yards further to carry. They are not such an extreme carry, but our line has changed 20 yards from where it was the last 10 years. So getting it into your head you have to aim it 20 yards further right than you have been for the last eight or nine years is hard. You are used to teeing it up right next to the right-hand tee marker and hitting a driver in the normal spot, r the 3-wood in a normal spot. That line is now moved over and that's hard to get into your head. When you change a golf course subtlety like they have here, that we've played so many times. 12 is the same. 12 we've always blown it over the left bunker. Not many guys will be able to get it over there now. So it's hard to get it in your head you have to aim it up the fairway as opposed to aim it over the bunker. So it's more that sort of trickiness. The par-3, 13, I think it might actually be easier than it was before, even though it's 10 or 15 yards longer. 14, it's adjusting to the bunkers that are on the inside of the dogleg, not the outside of the dogleg. You are so used to stepping it up, autopilot, the normal spot, your driving lines are going to change on the 14th hole. It's more awkward changes like that, rather than out and out difficulty.