Tiger Woods fights his way into the Masters with vintage round

After 18 months of injuries, missed cuts, withdrawals, embarrassing chipping woes, and a completely unreliable game, Tiger Woods was back on Saturday afternoon at Augusta National. You don’t want to extrapolate too much from one round and who knows what it means for Sunday or going forward this summer. But it was a thrill to watch him go to work on moving day at the Masters.

If you were watching him on the range before the round, it appeared Saturday would be another one of those slogs. He was pulling his irons, the weakest part of his game so far this week, and even his good friend Notah Begay III said it did not look great.

But once he was on the course, that shakiness from the range was completely gone and Woods was as dialed-in as we’ve seen him since 2013. The front nine was played in relative obscurity while we all angrily waited for CBS to finally come on the air, but he was on fire throughout. He posted three birdies in his first four holes, and rarely had to do much work with the putter to finish them off. His tee shot at the 226-yard par-3 4th, a hole that played as the most difficult on the course on Friday, was a classic Tiger statement.

That shot, measured at 10 inches from the cup, was good for his third straight birdie and put a charge into the entire property before the leaders ever got to the first tee.

After adding another birdie at the par-5 8th, Tiger finished up his first nine with an outward 32. And given the way he was dropping darts on all the flagsticks, it could have been better. He put his approach shots inside 10 feet at the 6th and 7th but missed two good chances at birdie. With how locked-in he looked on the approaches, this was a relatively easy 32. The number put him inside the top 5 with 27 holes to play.

Just as things started to get close, Tiger’s run threatened to go off the rails at the 13th hole, the easiest (according to scoring averages) on the course. Woods tried to turn one over on that famous dogleg left and absolutely chunk-hooked it right into the trees. Tiger has struggled working the ball right-to-left, but this was beyond awful.

Tiger caught a break, however, and he was able to find his ball, which stayed on the edge of the tree line as opposed to diving deep into the woods. Because this is the 13th, and it’s the easiest on the course, Tiger still had great chance at making a par. He did better, getting home in three and pouring the birdie putt that prompted a fist pump that we’ve not seen in many months.

After that escape at the 13th, Tiger finally gave his first shot back on the next hole. The back nine was certainly not the “stripe show” (Tiger term) of the first nine, and Woods scrambled to stay inside the top five as birdies rolled in all around him on the leaderboard.

He got the birdies he needed to at the two easy par-5s. But he gained no ground after making bogey on the finishing hole. The 4-under 68 was incredible to watch but he definitely lost some momentum over the final seven or eight holes. It’s hard to complain or pick nits though given where we’ve been with Tiger in recent months. The final card (via Masters.com):

Unless Jordan Spieth collapses, and it doesn’t look like he will, Tiger’s not going to win his fifth green jacket this week. But this entire tournament, and especially Saturday’s third round, were inconceivable just a week ago, when we weren’t sure he would even play because his game was in such shambles.