Tiger Woods Got Off to a Blistering Start in His Third Round at The Players Championship

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Tiger Woods entered the third round on the cut line, but when he finished it, he had moved all the way up into a tie for eighth at eight-under. He attributed his lowest round, a seven-under, 65, at The Players Championship to a hot start after a great warmup on the range.

"“Today I felt more comfortable with my overall warm-up today. I hit the ball much better during warm-up. I felt I had better control of hitting it right-to-left and left-to-right. I just felt more comfortable with it and consequently today I was able to shape the golf ball both ways and started to control it a little bit better today.”"

Woods made six birdies on the front nine and added two more on the back nine before carding his first, and only bogey of the day on the par-4 14th hole.

"“Well I finally got off to a good start. I birdied the first couple of holes and I just kept it rolling from there. I hit a lot of good shots today. It was nice to see a few putts go in. I hit a lot of, overall, the whole day, a lot of quality shots and 65 was probably as high as I could have shot today, which was kind of nice.”"

For Woods, there’s nothing but positives to take away from his third round at TPC Sawgrass. In the middle of a comeback that has seen both ups and downs on both the greens and off the tee, Woods managed to hit 15/18 greens and had over 99 feet of putts. He also managed to hit 11/14 fairways off the tee.

While it is likely that he won’t be in the top 10 at the end of the day, it’s clear that when his game is on, he can still go low.

"“Well I won’t be by end of the day, but it’s nice to kind of somewhat be up there. These guys are going to go low today again. I think that some of the guys will probably shoot better scores than I did out there today. It’s definitely gettable. I know there’s a lot of pressure coming down the back nine here, but I think these guys, the way they have setup the golf course today, it’s set up for these guys to go low.”"

Other notes:

– 65 is Woods’ lowest score at The Players Championship
– This was his lowest score since round two of the 2015 Wyndham Championship
– His eight birdies are most in a round since round three of 2014 WGC-Mexico Championship
– His front-nine 30 is the best nine hole score since round two of the 2013 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, his most recent win