“I felt very good out there”, said Woods, who is having the worst season of a professional career that began in 1996.
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“His distance control isn’t good, he’s hitting it all over the place, he’s not swinging all that well so there are some physical issues there”.
In the round of 16, Perrine beat 37-year-old Todd Mitchell of Bloomington, Illinois, 4 and 3; and Konishi topped Michigan sophomore Kyle Mueller of Watkinsville, Georgia, 2 up.
“I was telling Joey (caddie Joe LaCava) it’s finally nice to get something out of a round, a round that could have been two to four under par, it’s finally six“.
Two-time heart transplant recipient Erik Compton, William McGirt and Tom Hoge shared the first-round lead at 62.
Jim Herman, Morgan Hoffman and Derek Ernst each finished one stroke behind the leaders at seven under.
Woods tees it up in this week’s Wyndham Championship, which he must win in order to qualify for the FedEx Cup play-offs. Woods is 187th.
The 39-year-old only recently committed to the Wyndham, the final event of the regular season on the U.S. circuit, as part of a bid to earn extra FedExCup points. For every near miss – such as the one on the third green when Woods spun his putter in the air after his birdie try burned the right edge of the cup – and choice word (just one today) and exasperated look to the sky, there was a shot that elicited a roar from the crowd.
Tiger Woods heads into this week’s crunch Wyndham Championship with a warning from Jason Day that the majority of players no longer fear him. He went out in 32, and the masses got antsy.
Tiger Woods kept saying his game was getting better, even though his results didn’t show it. Even if it doesn’t happen, his recent great play figured to continue. For my money, there’s no better young player on the PGA Tour that isn’t now in the top-5 of the Official World Golf Rankings.
It was his first time ever playing Sedgefield Country Club in a competitive setting, but the wet conditions helped players score a bit lower than usual. This is only his 11th tournament of the summer as he continues a slow and lengthy recovery from back surgery.
Woods, who is at No. 187 on the points list, is pretty far from the bubble.
If he’s more relaxed than he would normally be, perhaps it’s because he has nowhere else to go. A reminder that he carded three rounds in the 60s at the Greenbrier last month for the first time since his T2 at the Barclays two years ago and put up another three sub-70 at the Quicken Loans National.
To be fair, Woods has made small strides since the beginning of the year, when he exploded with an 82 in Phoenix then pulled out of the Farmers Insurance Open because of tightness in his lower back.
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“It wasn’t really a hard decision” to play, Hurley said, “but it’s certainly hard to do”. The greens are fast enough as it is.
