Tiger Woods plays ‘gross’ golf but keeps moving up Torrey Pines leaderboard

Tiger Woods is not going to win the Farmers Insurance Open, and in a previous era, that would be a considered a failure. He’s won this event seven times and bagged an eighth win on this course at the U.S. Open while playing on a broken leg and torn ACL. But that was a long time ago, when Tiger’s and our expectations resided in a different universe than the one we approached the 2018 edition with this week. That’s why what Tiger called “gross” play was still encouraging to watch on Saturday at Torrey Pines.

This 2018 Farmers Insurance Open is an unqualified success. It’s not always looked pretty, but again, we’re operating under a new paradigm. Success is defined by simply staying healthy -- getting through a tournament without pain or withdrawing in pain. Success is defined by simply being competitive, whether that’s contending, just making a cut, or not completely embarrassing yourself by chipping it all over the yard. Tiger is not going to contend, but he’s made his first cut in almost 900 days and looked competitive while doing it. Now he’s taking it to the weekend.

Saturday was another exhibit of how this comeback might be different than the previous depressing, short-lived attempts. Tiger put his back to the test, hacking out of Torrey Pines’ clotted five-inch rough. He found that stuff time after time, as his driver continued to be the biggest problem in his game. Woods hit just three of 14 fairways, a woeful mark that he overcame with some Tiger magic. At the start, it was his putter that was on fire, as he rolled in multiple bombs to both save par and get a few red numbers up on the board early. This save from 20 feet was the end of an incredible putting run.

Through his front nine, Tiger hit just one of seven fairways and three of nine greens-in-regulation. Buuuut he needed only 11 putts, and that is how you go out in 1-under 35 with a mostly trash game off the tee and underwhelming ballstriking.

There were no jaw-dropping highlights about this round of 2-under of 70. Honestly, the most noticeable thing about the day was how he just kept missing the fairway. But he just slowly moved up the board, and that’s kind of how Tiger has always done it when he’s at his best. When he was winning every other week, a big part of it was turning rounds that were supposed to be 75 into a 71, or turning a round that should have been even-par into 2 or 3-under. Every pro on Tour faces those days, and few have the ability to pull off that trick like Tiger always did. That, more than the highlight shots, was why he won so often — not some insane birdie streaks day after day.

We hear Tiger use the word #process so often that it’s become a punchline — long before Sam Hinkie and Joel Embiid made it a thing for the 76ers. In recent years, “process” was usually just an out, a catch-all cover to explain away some awful round we just watched. But this is the #process put into action.

His putting was great early, and his short game, which has made us the most nervous since 2015, actually carried him to the respectable score. He’s getting in the red with a game that’s about as rusty as you would expect and staying healthy under some testy conditions on the spine.

Tiger will say he’s frustrated with all the missed fairways and having to grind on every single hole. But the expectations have changed, and he even said as much earlier this week when he told us he’s just “building towards April.” In the past, he’d say he was at every single tournament to win. He’s not going to win on Sunday night, but as boring as it is to say, the reps matter more. That’s the new reality for Tiger Woods, the 42-year-old 647th ranked player in the world. Sunday is another rep, and while Torrey Pines is tough and promotes boring golf, the boring stuff is still better than anything we’ve watched the last few years.