Tiger Woods’ Sunday at the PGA has been an incomprehensible, beautiful mess

Tiger Woods just finished an incomprehensible front nine at the PGA Championship. It made no sense. Nothing computes. But somehow, he made the turn just one shot out of the lead and with an out-of-control St. Louis crowd roaring behind him.

Tiger hit no fairways on his opening. None, zero. He missed in both directions. I don’t know the golf swing but even I could tell his shoulders and feet were so far apart — first late and then too quick — that he had to be searching off the tee.

It didn’t matter. We’ve heard all week that you have to hit fairways at this relatively simple setup at Bellerive. Hit it as far as you can in the fairway, hit greens, and make some putts. But Tiger was wild. He was all over the place.

He finished the front nine 3-under par, going out in a miraculous 32 that put him just a shot off the pace. So how’d he do it? His irons are completely dialed-in, and that helped him on the front end of the round with two birdies in his first three holes. It should have been three but he missed an eight-foot putt on the opening hole.

And then from the fourth hole onward, he relied on some outrageous recovery work and a hot putter. He had just 10 putts on his opening nine, an indicator of just how well he’s recovering. You know what’s not sustainable? 10 putts over nine holes. It’s not all work with the putter. Some of it is wedge work or sand shots putting the ball to close range.

The best recovery of the nine came at the 9th hole, where he hit a vintage Tiger shot shape from the junk and up to the back tier of the green.

The crowd lost it and then he poured in the birdie putt and they lost it again. Tiger gave us a little fist pump and a “f**k yeah” and that’s when you can tell he knows he stole one and is feeling it.

That birdie is gravy. You cannot expect it after a drive that looked like it might go out-of-bounds for one of the harshest penalties in the game. Instead, he somehow turned it into a red number. It summed up the miracle front nine we just watched.

Now Tiger needs to keep the pedal down on the back nine and actually start finding some fairways. For the week, he’s now 13-under on the front nine and 2-over on the back nine. He’ll obviously have no chance if he goes the wrong way coming into the clubhouse on Sunday. There’s too much talent ahead of and around him on the leaderboard.