Tiger Woods got off to a rough start at the U.S. Open and the problems only compounded as he made his way around Chambers Bay. The result was one of the worst rounds in his professional career, a 10-over round of 80. Contending is completely out of the picture and even making the cut will be an extreme challenge. Woods needs to rebound in a major way to avoid being among the bottom few on the leaderboard. He’s currently tied for 153rd place out of 156 players.
U.S. Open leaderboard 2015: Tiger Woods shoots a career-worst 10-over 80
Following an awful first round, Tiger Woods will need to go extremely low on Friday to even make the cut.
Woods’ game hasn’t been good for a while -- he carded a career-worst 85 in his last tournament -- and nothing he tried on Thursday worked. He couldn’t hit fairways, he couldn’t hit greens and he couldn’t putt when he finally found the surface. Woods didn’t make a birdie until his 16th hole and by then it was way too late.
The problems started early on as he opened the round with back-to-back bogeys. Even when he hit a couple of solid shots, he burned the edge of the cup on potential par or birdie putts. He consistently fought his swing during the round, aiming far left at times, but still ending up way right. FOX’s shot tracer perfectly illustrated the problems Woods was having off the tee.
On average, the field has hit 73 percent of fairways, but Woods mustered to hit just 6 of 14 (43 percent). That left him constantly scrambling out of the rough and bunkers. The result was only nine greens hit in regulation. Woods managed to scramble for pars for a bit, carding four straight pars to remain at 5-over. He couldn’t keep that pace up, however, and the problems snowballed on No. 11. He dropped a shot there and followed it up with bogeys on Nos. 12 and 13. Things then went from bad to worse on No. 14. He missed the fairway, had trouble in the bunkers and couldn’t even make a short putt to salvage a double bogey.
Woods was clearly dejected as he played his final few holes to finish up the worst U.S. Open round of his career. According to Justin Ray of Golf Channel, Woods’ previous worst in a U.S. Open was a 77. That was all the way back in 1996 when he was playing the event as an amateur.
It’s no secret Woods’ game is in a rough place. It has been for a while as he attempts yet another swing change to try to regain the world No. 1 form of his earlier career. He’s struggled to take the work he’s done on the practice range out onto the course and the result has been very up-and-down performances. His inconsistencies, combined with a very difficult Chambers Bay layout, were a prime recipe for a disastrous round and that’s exactly what happened.
Woods has made plenty of U.S. Open history during his career. He added to it on Thursday, just not in the way he’d prefer.
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