Tiger Woods played like the 172nd-best player in the world in Memorial 1st round

There was nothing surprising about the Memorial opening round played by Tiger Woods, No. 172 player in the world. This is who Woods is now -- an inconsistent and often mediocre 39-year-old golfer who seems to be on a constant grind just to get to even-par. There are plenty of ugly shots, some great ones, inexcusable bogeys, and miraculous saves. Playing four straight rounds at a tournament, which just last month he achieved in consecutive events for the first time in 600 days, seems to be the more realistic goal for the current iteration of Tiger Woods.

The safest bet in golf right now is Tiger missing the fairway on his first hole of a round and making bogey. If you want to increase the difficulty a bit, bet on a left miss. Woods obliged on Thursday, yanking one down the left side and dropping a shot right out of the gate. He compounded that with a ball in the water on his second hole, where he couldn’t recover and carded an awful bogey on a par-5.

It was those par-5s that were always Tiger’s most reliable path to victory. He sped past the field with birdies and eagles. Now, there’s a cadre of more talented and younger players who hit it farther and have that exact same advantage. Woods, meanwhile, cannot put the ball in the fairway and is scrambling just to make pars on those holes. At The Players, he made multiple double bogeys on par-5s for the first time in more than 1100 rounds. Thursday, he played them 1-over on his way to an outward 40.

The first nine was a mess off the tee from start to finish. He opened with those two drives left, and then started blocking everything way out to the right. He was wide right at 13, 15, 17, and then twice at 18, one of which sailed off the property and out-of-bounds on a hole with a ton of extra room to miss in that direction. Woods slammed his club into the ground and then asked caddie Joe LaCava for a provisional. That second tee shot stayed in bounds but went in the same direction way off the fairway, and it looked like Tiger might snap his driver out of disgust.

Even if he did snap the driver, his troubles wouldn’t exactly go away -- he repeatedly missed with a 3-wood and even a 5-wood off the tee. Those two tee balls at the 18th led to a double bogey and capped that 4-over 40 on his first nine, which was better than only one player on the course at the time.

And then just as you get ready to say he’s finished and lost, Tiger posts a second nine score that was totally incongruous with what we actually watched all morning. Woods damn near got back to even-par with a birdie putt on his final hole of the day. Instead, he just missed the edge, made a par and capped a 3-under 33 on his second nine. It was a clean card on the second nine, but the tee-to-green show was still messy. Woods is still talented and experienced enough to pull pars, and even birdies, out of nowhere. He finished with just four fairways hit, but even the stats there were somewhat misleading.

When he did actually hit a fairway, the rest of his game was still sharp enough to convert red numbers. In the middle of that awful first nine, Woods did find the middle of the fairway at the 14th. With his ball actually in play, he promptly stuck a short approach shot to just six feet for an easy birdie.

The irons were steady and his putting was just fine. He rolled in birdie putts from 20 and 16 feet on that clean second nine. At the 6th hole, he pounded his drive down the left side of the fairway, and even looked surprised himself with the positive result off the tee. Again, he took advantage of not having to chop out from the trees or the rough and rolled in a birdie putt.

The score on the second nine was seven shots better than his opening nine, but Tiger still seems a long way from contending. There’s just too much grinding and scrambling to make pars while the young talent out there zips up to the top of the leaderboard (Jordan Spieth held the lead as Tiger finished).

We’ve seen Tiger come back too many times to think this is how he’ll stay. His performance at the Masters, when we didn’t know if he could even chip a golf ball without embarrassing himself, was incomprehensible. His second nine alone was an improbable comeback on Thursday.

But at the end of his first round at the Memorial, we’re left with a golfer who is six shots back with a game that doesn’t seem close to championship level. That’s what you should have expected from Tiger right now.

His final card, which put him in 65th place at the time he left the golf course (via PGATour.com):

★★★

SB Nation presents: Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn could never last