The key to Tiger Woods’ PGA Championship was a mid-round shirt change

The final men’s major of the season is off and running in St. Louis. Rickie Fowler is our early pace-setter with his best first round at a major, a 5-under 65 to take the lead at the PGA Championship. Fowler played in total obscurity because of the disgraceful TV arrangement at this major. We’ll get into that more later but here are some observations on Tiger, who we did get to watch, and his playing partner this morning.

1. Tiger Woods changed his shirt and that made all the difference. This is not true but it’s the facile narrative you’ll read most capturing his first round, including right here! Woods opened a disastrous 3-over through his first two holes. There were stingers that became smothered hooks into the rough and punch outs that found the bottom of a pond. Coming off the disappointing weekend at Firestone, and his revelation that he spent all of Monday in and out of ice baths to deal with inflammation, it seemed this would be a constant slog of a day and quick exit. Then he changed his shirt. That’s not really a thing that happens in golf, but it worked. He was 3-over in three holes with the old shirt and 3-under with the new shirt.

The day was a bit of a slog, even after Tiger changed his shirt following those two disastrous holes. He never really had his best stuff — missing fairways and greens and scrambling to make pars.

While his playing partners, defending champ Justin Thomas and two-time PGA champ Rory McIlroy, posted early birdies to move up the leaderboard, Tiger struggled to avoid a complete ejection from the tournament.

Those scrambling pars turned into birdie chances over his final 10 holes. It was still a grindy day, but it did become easier as he found some rhythm over those last 10.

We started this major saying it was the least optimistic we’d felt about Tiger’s chances at a major this season. We know he just held the damn lead on the back nine of The Open, but all the disclosures about how sore and stiff he’s felt in the last two weeks weren’t ideal. The course also felt like it would set up a birdiefest, a style Tiger hates at majors, for those younger, big-hitting talents and Woods wouldn’t be able to keep up with that. That may still be the case, but Tiger’s response after such a negative feeling around his health all week and those ominous first two holes was some vintage grinding stuff.

2. One of those young bombers that everyone loved this week was McIlroy. He became the favorite as the course softened up and his right-to-left ball flight was hailed as perfectly suited for maybe the most predominantly dogleg left golf course in the world (12 of 14 par 4s/5s dogleg left).

Rory posted two birdies in his first four holes to promptly get in the red, and the commentary took on this “there he goes” tone. But, at the end of the day, he put the same number on the card as Tiger, an even-par 70. There are no pictures on the scorecard but Tiger’s felt like a complete salvage and positive result, while Rory’s 70 felt like a disappointment. It was a reminder of how much Tiger can get out of a round when it seems like he doesn’t have it and how often it seems like Rory wastes opportunities or struggles to get something out of a round unless he’s got everything rolling at once.

This can change in a hurry tomorrow and Rory could come out and feast. He’s actually playing well! He held the lead in a major two weeks ago with like three holes to go and played in the final Sunday pairing at a loaded WGC just four days ago. That is good golf! If it were some non-Rory name, we’d say he’s red hot. Maybe it’s the now four-year wait between majors, but the vibe around Rory is too often one of disappointment. The matching 70s in that group were illustrative of it.

3. On The Fried Egg podcast right after The Open, I said I was sick of people, myself included, discussing and complaining about the TV coverage. There’s too much of it and from people who have no idea how hard it is to broadcast golf. Buuuuuuuut this must be said: The PGA coverage is a disgrace. Not the actual coverage — the production was fine and it looks like it will be great this weekend with a ton of Tracer tech — but the TV deal is offensive.

TNT not coming on the air until 2 p.m. is inexcusable. The WGC Match Play has as long a TV window for its first round. Several regular season PGA Tour events come close to six hours. This is a major. Tiger Woods was playing his first PGA in three years. Rickie shot a 65 and we didn’t see a shot. There were two separate streams for each featured group, so unlike PGA Tour Live coverage, you’re getting a ton of fluff on just one group unless you have two streams open in two tabs and are toggling. Most people don’t or can’t do that because they’re on an app, so you get to watch a bunch of Tiger-Rory-JT walking up to a green or waiting to hit while maybe Phil and others are hitting shots over on the other stream. Two groups on one stream should be the play — we see it every week on PGA Tour Live.

So yes, the production was fine and the stream quality held up for me all morning. But TNT running a bunch of episodes of Charmed and Supernatural during Tiger’s opening round and Rickie shooting 65 in total obscurity is shameful! Get mad online!

Fortunately, we are almost at the end of this current deal with meager six-hour broadcasts. Next year’s PGA at Bethpage is the final year in the current contract. I’d imagine in the next contract, we get an arrangement with modern coverage windows similar to the 10 hours at the U.S. Open and 14 hours at the British Open for these first two rounds.