Tiger Woods' play through two rounds at Riviera Country Club after a seven-month break is encouraging, AdamSchupak writes.
We'll never really know what Tiger has to do to get ready for these rounds but after he made his third consecutive birdie to finish up his round of 2-under 69 on Thursday, he smiled with glee as if it was all worth it. Thomas just shook his head in amazement. CBS's lead analyst Trevor Immelman tweeted,"That's the same reaction everyone who has played with him over the last 30 years has had.
Friday's 74 was a bit of a mixed bag. Tiger's famed Scotty Cameron Newport putter malfunctioned on the front nine. He missed birdie putts from 9 feet at No. 10, 4 feet at No.11 and 5 feet at 16. They were all missed to the right. He canceled out bogeys at Nos. 12 and 13 with a near ace at 14 and a beautiful approach at 17 to inside 3 feet. But as PGA Tour Radio's Will Haskett noted in a tweet, he's never putted well on Riviera's poa greens.
After Tiger missed another birdie effort from inside 10 feet at No. 1, he practiced his stroke for several minutes between the first green and second tee and did a drill where he dropped a ball from eye level. Perhaps that triggered something or perhaps it was just the law of averages kicking in, but he holed his next three putts from 10, 5 and 10 feet – unfortunately they were all to save par.
"I did not putt well today, I blocked a lot of putts early and this is probably the highest score I could have shot today," Woods said."Probably should have shot probably five or six better than this easily." That's a pretty fair assessment. He could've been lurking, on the fringes of the trophy hunt going into the weekend had some putts dropped. Who knows what seeing Tiger's name hovering around the first page of the leaderboard would have done to the psyche of the leaders, but it wasn't to be.
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