On the eve of the tournament, poor Tiger declared that his goal was to win the PGA Championship, the last major of the season, and that he faced the competition in top form after a few months in which injuries had once again caused him problems. Although he had been inactive on the Tour for quite some time, nobody expected the cruel fate that awaited Woods on the green fairways of the Atlanta Athletic Club.
How bitter must have been the drink – or rather the gulps – that the Californian had to drink! The 35-year-old from Cypress had the dishonor of scoring his worst round ever in the renowned tournament.
After being three under par through the first five holes, Woods fell apart and signed a card of 77, seven over par. He dropped two balls in the water, spent most of the day in the sand traps and finished with three double bogeys and five bogeys. Never had Woods turned in a card worse than 75 strokes at the PGA until that awful round at The Athletic Club. His only worse performance in a major was when he shot 81 in the third round of the 2002 British Open.
But the ordeal did not end there for Woods, who now seems to be paying for all his extra-marital ‘sins’ (is his ex-wife making him budú?), as the next day the shipwreck was complete and he failed to make the cut.
The American, lord and master of world golf for years, went home after finishing the tournament with a two-round total of 150 strokes, ten over par. He was six strokes shy of the cut.
Woods recorded double bogeys on the 11th and 12th holes and was out of contention going into the weekend. He finished with 73 strokes, three over par, after scoring 77 in the first round. It was the fourth time Tiger missed the cut in a major, including one he played while still an amateur.
“I think I’ve hit 20 bunkers in two days. And four or five balls have gone in my water,” Woods told reporters after his second and for him final round. “So I’m not going to have a very good result. I hit the ball a lot better. I’ve been kicking well the last two days and really felt great, but I was never getting to the green early enough,” he explained. Apart from the emotional ones, the cut is going to have other more material consequences for Woods. Considering the injuries that had not allowed him to play a full tournament for almost four months, since the Masters in April (he finished fourth: what a change!),
Tiger has not been able to accumulate enough FedEx Cup points to play in the tournaments that make up the so-called playoffs, exclusive to the season’s top performers.
What does the future hold for Tiger? Unless he recovers his self-confidence, that is to say, if he does not feel again the magic of golf that made him famous, the outlook does not look promising for the Californian, formerly known as the Extraterrestrial. The once galactic golfer will have to put his feet on the ground and work even harder to try to recover his currently dormant talent.
Nobody -he the first- expected the PGA Championship trophy, and nobody could have thought a few months ago that Tiger would roll down the world ranking, the one he dominated for years like no other golfer until then, to fall below the first thirty places. And he continues to fall and it is not out of the question that he will soon fall out of the top-50 of that ranking.
Unbowed, Tiger, after the hecatomb at the Atlanta Athletic Club, drew positive conclusions from his experience. “Despite everything, it’s a giant step forward that I’ve played without health problems two weeks in a row,” he said. Now what he has to do is prepare harder with his Canadian coach Sean Foley and adapt better to his swing change. “I need to work more,” Tiger said. So that’s it: let’s get to work.
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