Not every Tiger Woods round can be a shaken up can of Monster energy. We were due for a relatively slow loop and that’s what we got on Friday afternoon at Bay Hill. Boring is better than the downward depressing spiral we got in so many rounds in recent years. Par golf is an improvement over that. Every single round can’t contain some of the fireworks we got in the last three or four rounds in both Tampa and on Thursday in Orlando.
Tiger Woods’ boring 2nd round keeps him in the hunt at Arnold Palmer Invitational
Tiger had a relatively uneventful Friday compared to the blitzes of recent rounds in Tampa and Orlando. But he’s not out of it at Bay Hill and that’s another sign of improvement in this comeback.
Tiger finished off his second round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational with an ever-par 72. There were ups and downs, but it was a mostly uneventful five-hour march around Bay Hill. From accounts on the ground, Tiger was hitting a low stinger driving iron on the range to perfection before the round. Then, just like you do at the local muni, he left the range and went to the first tee and promptly snapped one left off the grid. The range form didn’t carry over to the first tee and the result was a chip-out back into the fairway and an opening bogey.
From there, Tiger spent much of the opening nine calmly putting pars up on the board. He gave himself plenty of birdie opportunities on Friday, but repeatedly burned edges or just missed the cup. A bogey at the 9th hole sent him out in 38 and way out of sight of the leaders, Byrson DeChambeau and Henrik Stenson, who got in the clubhouse early at 11-under.
Tiger was never really a threat to miss the cut unless something completely imploded on the back nine. So while this may have been boring at times, that’s a dramatic improvement from recent years, and from his first two starts this season in California. Every round is not going to have a bunch of highlights or a birdie streak that whips Twitter into a frenzy.
Woods did salvage the round on the back nine with two birdies to make him even for the day. His first birdie of the day was a tap-in at the par-5 12th.
Tiger’s second red number would come in similar fashion at the par-5 16th. That’s a must-birdie and even potential eagle hole if you want to contend. Tiger hit a wild drive right, but muscled one out of the rough and landed it pin high to get on the green in two. His eagle try just missed and he settled for another tap-in birdie.
The driver continues to be a problem, as we saw on Thursday when consistent misses put him trouble and always in scramble mode. It caught up with him when one wild drive hit a cart path and went out-of-bounds. Friday’s round featured less drivers and more of those low burners. He’ll need to hit it big at Augusta and can’t simply rely on the stinger off every tee, but it’s still beautiful to watch. A 323-yard low rope on the 18th was one of the prettiest drives of the week, from anyone in the field. His birdie putt, however, again stayed out of the cup.
When he walked off Bay Hill, Tiger’s 4-under number was good enough for 17th place. He’s still a ways back from that leading number of Stenson and DeChambeau but there are 36 more holes to make another charge at a course he knows so well. The par-5 scoring is definitely back this week and that will be a key if he’s to make any noise over the weekend.
Tiger was -1.5 in strokes gained off the tee on Thursday so he throttled down a little on Friday. His irons and short game have been some of the best in the world and made up for that deficiency. But he’ll need to improve his tee shots if he wants to actually win a major. That we’re talking about that being within reach is still an achievement on its own. He’s close and competitive again, and sometimes a boring even-par round can be an indication of that too.
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