Tiger Woods's First Round Back on the PGA Tour wasn't Great, but the Season is Long
By Michael Shamburger
Tiger Woods’s first round back on the PGA Tour didn’t go quite as well as he may have hoped. Woods made it through the front nine at Torrey Pines, a place he’s won eight times in his career, at one over par before putting together back-to-back birdies on the 10th and 11th holes to get to one-under. After that, Tiger’s driver, which had been causing him problems all day, slowly became more of an issue and he went bogey-bogey-bogey-double bogey-par-bogey on the 12th through 17th holes before finishing off his round with a birdie on the 18th.
Tiger Woods – Round 1 Torrey Pines (North) – Farmers Insurance Open |
|||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | OUT |
| 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 36 |
| 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 37 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | IN |
| 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 36 |
| 3 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 39 |
Tiger hit just four of 14 fairways off of the tee and at Torrey Pines you can’t be playing the entire round trying to scramble out of the rough. Woods did show that he has been working quite hard on his short game and wasn’t too bad with his putter either.
There was a lot of bad in Tiger’s first round, but again, this is the first PGA Tour event that Tiger has played in since August of 2015, so before we start pumping out the “Tiger will never win again” takes, let’s give the guy some time to get used to being back on Tour.
Tiger is about to start his second round and he’ll need a really good one if he wants to play this weekend, but he’s got three more tournaments scheduled over the next four weeks so there is plenty of time for him to get back into a groove, if he can straighten out the driver.