Tiger Woods was introduced on the 10th tee at Liberty National early Thursday morning.
No roars, no buzz, no obnoxious New Yorkers screaming — T-EYE-GAAAHHHH!
No, just the sounds of silence at the Northern Trust.
This was not the way one would imagine any sort of sports playoff getting underway. No one was there.
Seems The Sheriff Of Nottingham’s henchmen decided to keep the fans out until later in the morning. No, you cannot come out and walk with the biggest name in the game, no you cannot watch Tiger Woods’ opening tee shot, no you cannot scream his name, no you cannot yell “Get In The Hole!” and no you cannot scream “Mashed Potatoes.” You must wait at the gates until the stands are deemed safe even enough even though none of you want to sit in those stands. You want to follow Tiger, but no, you cannot.
No, Tiger Woods teed off with the sort of gallery that would normally turn out to watch Scott Piercy and J.T. Poston in the first round of a PGA Tour event — and that would be no one.
Imagine if the NFL started a playoff game and not opening the gates until after the first quarter ended.
Well, the gates finally opened by the time Tiger was on his ninth hole. Maybe that was a good thing. Those Tiger fans missed a two-hour horror show.
Woods was plodding along at even par through his first four holes on that back nine then he was bush-wacked at the signature hole, the seemingly innocent 140-yard par three 14th.
Pitching wedge was the club du jour for most, long was a no-no with stuff so high you could lose small children in it. Woods tried to flatten out a nine, pulled it and yes, went into no-man’s land. A penalty shot, a flubbed third then a fourth to four feet produced a double-bogey five and Woods was like a fighter up against the ropes — the beating started. Two more bogeys at 15 and 17 and a four-over 39 left his late-arriving supporters in disbelief.
Tiger tried his best to get it back on his final nine, the front, but it was obvious that this would be Act Two of the Open Championship performance.
It shouldn’t have been surprising. During Wednesday’s pro-am, Woods, to the dismay of his amateur partners, simply stopped hitting shots. He didn’t hit a tee shot after the seventh hole and opted to only chip and putt over the final nine holes. “Just feeling stiff, being smart about it. What I did pre-Augusta, where I chipped and putted for nine holes. Same thing,” was how Woods put it. He said he began feeling “stiff” early in that pro-am round. “This is kind of how it is. Some days I’m stiffer than others.”
Same deal Thursday, while others were feeling it and going low (Troy Merritt 62, D.J. 63), Woods was simply struggling to keep it near even par and didn’t do a very good job of it.
“I just didn’t play well,” Woods admitted after his 75 left him 13 shots behind Merritt, the unlikely leader. “Just one of those things where I just didn’t hit any good shots and didn’t make any putts. Other than that, added up to a round that broke 80.”
Really, what did we expect after his missed cut at Royal Portrush and his basic inactivity since?
“It was just off,” Wood reiterated. “I was just trying to feel it, trying to find it, and then could never get it. Then I got on a bad run there, a couple bogeys and a double. We all knew it was soft out here with the rain last night. I knew I had to go get it, post a low one, and didn’t do it. It’s certainly out there. Certainly gettable. Greens are soft. Fairways are soft. You can play aggressively and not have any real ramifications for playing aggressive.”
Worst of all it was wedges and short irons that undid Tiger. He’s been the absolute master of those clubs.
He’ll have to come up with something really good on Friday to stick around for the weekend.
But such is the 2019 season of Tiger Woods.
It’s as though his season really ended after The Masters.
