The BMW Championship that looked more like a US Open was the dominant theme of the week, but Olympia Fields played particularly hard for Tiger Woods.
Needing a top five finish to extend his PGA Tour season in the penultimate FedEx Cup playoff event, Woods found himself with the T-51 and never hit the track on the Chicago field. In fact, he never even broke the par in four rounds, a rarity during his legendary career.
How rare was it? The PGA Tour noted that this is only the fifth time Woods has shot four over-par rounds in the same event, and only the second time in a non-major tournament. That one other no greater? A little over ten years ago at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational 2010.
Of course, the circumstances in 2010 were very different. Woods was still looking to go back after the 2009 scandal and finished 78th with someone named Michael Jonzon in the 80 man camp.
“I need to hit the ball better, I need better chips, I need better putts and I need to score better,” Woods said after that performance at Firestone. The other three times he has recorded four scores over the limit have been at the 2003 PGA Championship (Oak Hill), the 1999 Open Championship (Carnoustie) and the 1998 US Open (Olympic Club).
Woods beat 14 players at Olympia Fields this week, including Marc Leishman by 19 shots, while acknowledging the difficulty of finding a rhythm during a season interrupted by a global pandemic. And the 15-time senior champion didn’t seem too angry about taking two weeks off before embarking on another tough path in Winged Foot for the 2020 US Open.
“I didn’t play as well as I would have liked in the first couple of days,” Woods told reporters after the final round. “Today was good. I hit the ball really well and only made a couple of putts, but today was more indicative of how I want to play in a couple of weeks. “
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