Tiger Woods is back to making cuts at the major championships. Following last month’s short two-day stay at the U.S. Open, Tiger is moving on for two more rounds at the British Open. Friday was his second straight round of even-par, but it was an adventure getting there and he’s six shots off the lead.
Tiger Woods will make The Open cut but there’s work to do to contend
Tiger thinks The Open is his best chance to win another major. This one was set up well for him in this comeback season, but he’ll need to get a move on it over the weekend.
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Tiger faced a dramatically different course on Friday, but the game and score were exactly the same. He’s still making too many mistakes and missing too many putts to contend. It could be worse, of course, but he’s hitting the ball too well to just be even-par. The last hole was a microcosm of this frustration, as Tiger hung back safe off the tee, hit a sky-high approach shot that was perfect, and then missed a shorter putt to take advantage of a rare birdie chance at Carnoustie’s closing hole. Woods was incredulous about the miss and it was the latest in two days of what feel like wasted opportunities.
The rain came to Scotland on Friday morning and changed up a Carnoustie that has been baked out for a month. It was still firm — that die was cast after a month-long drought — but the rollouts were cut in half. Tiger had to figure that out on the fly and the strategy was, by and large, to hang back and play it safe compared to the big bombers who had been mostly hitting drivers. On the back nine, Tiger had 218 to 258 yards into the green on his approach shot on all but one hole. As I wrote yesterday, it may be the sound and preferable strategy but you also have to work harder and often with smaller margins while trying to execute it.
Early in the round, it did appear Tiger would get more aggressive, pulling driver for the first time in the championship on the second tee. But he promptly pumped it miles right and into some junky sidehill lie. What followed was a duff from an impossible spot that went into the crowd, and an eventual bogey.
After bogeying two of his first three holes, it felt like we were heading for a second straight missed cut. Tiger quickly got it back to even with two straight birdies and then spent the rest of the day hovering right around that mark.
He was under-par on the inward nine but as noted above, it just felt like it could have been so much more. Maybe that’s wishing for a Tiger that doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s not all bad. Two rounds of even-par Tiger golf is kind of a choose your own conclusion exercise and I won’t scold you if you take a positive or negative view. Of course he’s not as good as he was 10 and 15 years ago. He’s also making cuts with relative ease and striking the ball in a way we never thought we’d see again. We didn’t even know if he’d play golf again this time last year, something he got emotional about this week when he was asked about returning to the Open after three years away. So is even-par and inside the top 30 (for the moment) good enough for you?
I’d be fine if it is. But we’re also starting to get deeper into the season where the missed opportunities go beyond just one-off frustrations and become the status quo. I’m not there at that point, either. He feels close and I think it’s premature to say this is the new status quo. Tiger is hitting it well enough to make a run up the board and still have us whipped into a frenzy come Sunday afternoon.
Woods is just inside the top 30, but it appears the late wave on Friday is going to get the easier side of the draw. That could move the leading number upward. Here’s your leaderboard:
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