Tiger Woods sets wrong kind of personal record in another shaky round at The Players

Tiger Woods ended Friday’s second round with one of those patented Tiger celebratory fist pumps, but you were mistaken if you thought it was the start of any positive run at this week’s Players Championship. That putt pushed Tiger through to the weekend, making the cut right on the number. He started Saturday’s round at the bottom of the leaderboard, and stayed there all day after an ugly outward 40 on a front nine that included the wrong type of personal record.

After making the cut, Woods was adamant that anyone who got to the weekend still had a chance to win. The spread was only eight shots from last place to the leaders. But the way he was hitting the ball through 36 holes, Tiger’s chances of making a charge into contention seemed slim. They were gone by his second hole on Saturday morning.

Woods cannot shake the left miss off the tee this week. He’s repeatedly yanked his drives into the trees or even an occasional hazard. That miss crept up at the worst time on No. 2, where Tiger drilled the trees just off the tee and had his ball land just 105 yards away. It was short of the ladies tee and some 70 yards short of where they mow the start of the fairway. The ShotTracker image would leave anyone a little embarrassed.

He made a mediocre punch-out from there, and a few more loose shots left him with a double bogey.

Tiger had played 245 par-5s at TPC Sawgrass prior to Saturday’s round and he made double bogey only twice. He did that on Saturday’s front nine alone. The trouble at No. 2 came from an awful tee shot, but the double at No. 9 was the result of poor play up around the green. Tiger’s ball was measured at just 63 feet from the hole in two, so everything looked well enough from the tee and approach. But a rough lie in the junk forced him to try a hack that went poorly. He’d need to repeat it again just to advance it out from another bad lie.

He was just 20 yards away from the green in two, but got on to the putting surface in 5 thanks to those adventures. This wasn’t a case of the “yips” or chipping problems we saw earlier this year, but just a bad lie and some mediocre-to-bad shots from those lies.

Tiger would finish No. 9 with another double bogey -- playing the first two par-5s in 4-over. In his career, Tiger’s destroyed the par-5s. It’s always his best route to victory. He overwhelmed modern courses and the par-5s were guaranteed birdies and eagles that would push him to the top of the leaderboard. It was startling seeing him take 7 strokes just to get in the hole on consecutive par-5s. As Justin Ray noted, we’ve never seen in before:

He was toast after the double at the 2nd, so the 9th just added insult to the day and set a new personal record for all the wrong reasons.

Tiger made the turn tied for dead last with Padraig Harrington with worries that it might just get worse and he’d distance himself in DFL at the bottom of the board. But I guess he can take some solace in the fact that he had a clean card on the back nine. Tiger ended the par-5 double bogey streak at the 12th. He needed an excellent pitch shot for a birdie chance, and the wedge delivered by putting it within tap-in range.

The red number was surrounded by eight pars on the back nine. But the clean card didn’t tell the entire story -- Tiger was scrambling to make pars and fighting those same misses he’s had all week. His final card (via PGATour.com):

We knew Tiger had little chance of winning The Players before he teed it up this week. It did not end well on Sunday at Augusta and he said he was still working through some “fresh” swing tweaks.

He’s in better shape than he was at the start of the year, but the 105-yard drives and double bogeys are still hard to watch. Expect more of the same shaky form and another grind on Sunday before he takes another break.