Tiger Woods’ U.S. Open is over after 2 difficult days at Shinnecock Hills

SOUTHAMPTON, New York — Tiger Woods didn’t survive to play the weekend at the U.S. Open. He finished the second round on Friday at a solid 2 strokes over for the day, but 10 over for the tournament, in a tie for 84th place and outside a plus-8 cut line.

Almost all of the damage was done on Thursday. Woods shot an 8-over-par 78 in his first round, sunk by a triple-bogey on the first hole and back-to-back doubles on his back nine. He was tied for 101st in the 156-man field at the end of the day, with work ahead of him. It looked for a time on Friday like he’d get himself inside the cut line. He birdied his first hole of the day, the par-4 10th, and rebounded from a bogey at the 14th with a birdie at the 16th.

Things turned negative again when he made double-bogey at the par-4 1st, the same hole he tripled on Thursday. Woods hit his approach shot into some wet fescue rough to the right of the hole, then hacked his ball out and over the green. After pitching on, he needed two putts to finish, and he dropped to plus-10 for the tournament.

He made bogey on two of his next five holes. In two days, he was 5 over at No. 1, and he dropped a combined 10 shots between the 1st, the par-3 2nd, and the par-4 14th.

Woods finished, however, with birdies on his last two holes of the day, the par-4 8th and 9th. He drained a 17-foot putt on his last stroke of Friday to card a 72 for the day. That inspired brief optimism that he might get enough help to keep playing, but he didn’t.

That came in the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, when he tied Rocco Mediate with a blockbuster putt on the 18th green on Sunday, then beat the veteran in an 18-hole playoff that took 19 holes on Monday. In a way, an entire era of golf has passed since then. Woods played his opening rounds in ‘08 with Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott, then the No. 2 and 3 players in the world. This year he played with Dustin Johnson and Justin Thomas, the current 1 and 2. Woods is now the 80th-ranked player, and even that’s a recent jump.

Five years have passed since Woods even made a cut in this tournament, at Merion in 2013. He didn’t play it in 2014 and flamed out quickly at Chambers Bay in 2015, when he was injured and probably shouldn’t have been playing at all. He can still destroy a golf ball, and he hit some blazing shots during his 36 holes in the Hamptons. But he didn’t make any exceptional shots around the greens, at least not until his last putt on Friday. He hit just 44 percent of greens in regulation, setting up his strings of bogeys.

This week didn’t singal that Woods is finished. He still cuts an imposing figure on the course and looks like Tiger Woods when he swings. But he doesn’t appear all that close to putting everything together for the kind of effort he’ll need to win a 15th major.