Woods, Nelson And Daly Locked In Battle For High Former Champ
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Scott Michaux on Tiger's opening 77 at Atlanta Athletic Club:
Battling once again to embrace the latest swing changes on the anniversary week of his working with Sean Foley, Woods looked lost at Atlanta Athletic Club. The mechanical thoughts that guided him through the opening holes fooled him into a false sense of security. He regretted dropping the mechanical game plan after it was too late to fix.
"Absolutely," he said of the misread to abandon his swing thoughts in mid-round. "I wouldn't have done what I did today. That's what's frustrating because I'm in a major championship, it's time to score, time to play and time to let it go. And it cost me the round."
John Huggan says many are finally coming to grips with the idea of the new Tiger reality.
What Woods did not admit to: the fact that he is not the golfer he once was and, more than likely given his multitude of physical and mental issues, will never be again. His putting -- a particular strength of his once peerless game -- has deteriorated to a point where he looks 45, not 35 on the greens. And his swing, formerly a thing of rhythmic and positional beauty, is now an unnatural looking heave, the penetrating ball-flight of years gone by now just gone.
Gary Van Sickle describes the round.
Woods all but played himself out of contention. He found more bunkers (seven) than he did fairways (five). It was in stark contrast to his confident comments a day earlier about a possible W, his abbreviation for a win.
Woods didn't have many positives in this round. He putted decently but was usually putting for par. He was unable to keep his tee shots in play, which really hurt. Worse, his misses went both directions — the dreaded two-way miss, as he often calls it. All things considered, it was a serious setback to Tiger's road to recovery.
Gene Wojciechowski looks at today and ahead.
But the miscalculation did more than cost him a round; it probably cost him any chance of ending a 2-year winless streak, as well as advancing to the tour's postseason playoff series. And if you're Fred Couples, can you really justify a captain's pick for Woods in November's Presidents Cup in Australia?
Right now, no way.
Woods' game was all over the Atlanta Athletic Club map. He was 3-under as he stepped to the No. 15 tee box (he started on the back nine). Then he went double-bogey, bogey, par, double-bogey.
In all, Woods played the last 13 holes at 10-over. I'm not sure he could have broken par on his video game.
To put the round in perspective, Jerry Pate shot 77. Pate shouldn't be in the tournament. He should be back home cleaning a crawl space or something. He's won exactly $32,594 on the Champions Tour this year and last played in a PGA Championship 10 years ago. He last made a cut at one of these things in 1983.
But the PGA of America gave him a special exemption and here he is. Tied with Woods.
Bob Sowards is a club professional from Ohio who’s played 27 holes of golf all year at his home course near Columbus.
“When I’m there I’m teaching or stocking balls or doing something productive. Sometimes I feel more like a range guy than a PGA professional,” the 43-year-old joked.
On Thursday, the “range guy” wiped the sweat from his brow — he’s not exactly a gym junkie and Atlanta Athletic Club felt like a sauna — and saw his name on the leaderboard at the 93rd PGA Championship, right below that of Tiger Woods.
He signaled to his buddy on the other side of the gallery ropes, who snapped a picture.
“Pretty cool, eh?” Sowards said.
We used to count his trophies, records and birdies. Thursday, we counted the number of times his ball found bunkers (14), ponds (2) and plugged lies (3). As one creative pal suggested, new interim caddie Bryon Bell may have raked more bunkers in one round than Woods' former looper Steve Williams did in one decade.
Rex Hoggard lists questions with some answers:
Has Jack Nicklaus’ Grand Slam record of 18 major championships, the benchmark that has driven him since his junior days, become less milestone and more Moby Dick?
The media is fond of saying Woods is an old 35-years-old, noting that Nicklaus never dealt with the litany of injuries, both physical and mental, that Woods has. Woods has the same number of majors (14) as Nicklaus did at 35, which proves the last four are always the hardest. But regularly being reminded of that summit can’t be productive.
If it is “reps” that you feel you truly need, than why not consider playing next week’s Wyndham Championship?
Woods said he will not play the regular season’s final event next week because of family obligations.
Woods, 35, is 129th in FedEx Cup points and needs to be among the top 125 through next week's Wyndham Championship in order to advance to the first of four playoff events in two weeks.
So unless he changes his mind, Woods would miss the four playoff events and it is unlikely he'd be seen on the PGA Tour again in 2011 unless he plays somewhere overseas.
There are four Fall Series events that follow the Tour Championship next month, but Woods has never played in any of them in their current configuration. The last time he played any of those tournaments was in 2005 at Walt Disney World.
Jim Litke tracked down Hank Haney who had this to say:
If only it were that simple. Reached by phone Thursday afternoon at his base in the Dallas area, Haney said the last thing he was going to do was try to analyze Woods' swing or his mindset from that distance.
"I'll say this, though, from my experience: Tiger thinks about the mechanics of every golf shot he's ever hit. I doubt the problem is that he's too mechanical or not mechanical enough. He hasn't had too many opportunities to practice and play and now he's at a major championship on a very difficult golf course," Haney said. "It might just be that simple.
From Brett Avery's stat roundup for day one:
4. In his two missed cuts in majors as a pro, Tiger Woods endured nine bogeys in the '06 U.S. Open at Winged Foot and seven bogeys in the '09 British Open at Turnberry. He made six bogeys in his first-round 77 at AAC. His major-career worst bogey count was 18 in the '03 PGA at Oak Hill.
And finally, Jeff Shultz on the Nike scripted shirt Tiger is supposed to wear Sunday:
The folks in the AAC gift shop were a tad presumptuous. They posed mannequins in four colored shirts — pink, blue, white, red — with a “Tiger Woods” credential hanging around the neck. The colors corresponded to Woods’ fashion plans for the tournament’s four days. Oops.
Video of his post round remarks:
