Tiger's Struggle

Brett Avery summed up Tiger's second round 76 best in his on-site, hole-by-hole blog:

Woods' tee shot barely stays out of the fairway on the left and his second checks up short of the green. His shoulders are slumped as he walks to the green and the gallery barley musters a saluting round of applause. It is hard to believe his second came up short of the green, especially factoring in the downwind conditions, but this has been a hard-to-believe two days. The reigning U.S. Open and Amateur champions and arguably the greatest player in the games' history are all double-digits over par. Woods' third skips past the hole and he misses for par. That puts him 12 over for 36 holes. When he holes out he is tied for 118th place. His statistics are nothing short of deplorable: Seven fairways, 18 greens, 63 putts, 3 birdies, 21 pars, nine bogeys and three double bogeys.

Tiger was up front after the round:

Q. Tell us what your emotional state is right now.

TIGER WOODS: Pissed. That pretty much sums it up right there. I thought I was playing well enough to shoot an under par round today, and I didn't do that.

Q. Was it rust?

TIGER WOODS: No, not rust. Unfortunately I just didn't put it together at the right time. I just didn't execute properly, and consequently, I shot 6 over.

Q. Was there a moment today where (inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No.

Q. You thought as you kept grinding, you still thought you were going to turn it around?

TIGER WOODS: You've always got to feel that way. I felt like if I just kept going, kept plodding along, I could have turned it around any time with one putt or one shot. And I made two good saves there on 18 and 1 and thought that that would be pretty good. Then made a good par there on 3. All in all, I thought I could have turned it around there.

Q. This is kind of a tough tournament and a tough venue to come back. Talk about that.

TIGER WOODS: It is. It's playing really hard. The golf course is very difficult. The wind is up now, just like it was yesterday afternoon. Marginal shots are just going to get killed here; it's just the nature of this golf course. Any U.S. Open, but more so on this golf course, but any U.S. Open venue that we play, any marginal shot here just gets penalized more so than any other Open.

Q. You've never missed a cut in a major. Can you talk about that?

TIGER WOODS: It's not something you want to have happen. I've gone, I guess, a while without missing one. Unfortunately I missed this one, and hopefully I can win the British.

Q. (Inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: Yeah, I knew if I made one birdie coming in and a couple pars, the ten shot rule would get me in.

Q. 20/20 hindsight, would you have (inaudible).

TIGER WOODS: No, I was not ready to play golf.

Q. What's next?

TIGER WOODS: Practice.

Q. Will you play before the British?

TIGER WOODS: Probably the Western.