After two months of questions about Tiger Woods’ putter, he answered them with an opening round 73 at the 2020 US Open on Thursday. The problems came differently for Woods everywhere.
Woods almost led the morning wave of players who won the putting, burying several long, resulting in five birdies a day. This wasn’t expected for the week. Woods has tinkered with his putter length and grip over the past few tournaments which didn’t instill much confidence in Winging Foot’s lolling, difficult greens. And yet the trustworthy Scotty Cameron was the only thing standing between him and shooting 77 to start the sixth US Open on that course.
A putting performance like the one he showed on Thursday should have resulted in a round that got him into the competition after 18 holes. It did for a while when Woods got red after three straight birdies on holes 9-11 and almost one on the 12th. But when he only hit six fairways and nine greens in regulation, he caught up with him home. He bogeyed on three of his last six and a double on the last (after smashing a chip) to drop eight from a lead on partner Justin Thomas.
“I didn’t finish the round the way I needed to,” said Woods. “I did a couple of putts in the middle part of the lap. It seemed like most of my drives landed on the first nine in the fairway and landed in bad spots. I tried to be as patient as possible, and unfortunately just.” I didn’t finish my lap the way I needed to. “
It wasn’t an inspiring start. If the tee-to-green game clicked, you could at least convince yourself that he found a hot putter in the past three days. But building its first lap on Thursday made the result even worse later this week. What if he hits it like Thursday, but doesn’t make the 15- and 20-foot points that he hit on Round 1 that help him put a score together?
US Open have not treated Tigers kindly in the past decade. Woods has not had a single top 10 result since graduating from T4 in Pebble Beach in 2010. He has as many miscuts (three) as he has cut since then. He has only played one weekend since 2014 (also at Pebble Beach last year).
Woods will go into the second round on Friday and will need something a lot better than Thursday if he wants to play at this event for the second year running over the weekend. Unfortunately, he probably played out of real competition on Thursday (unless we get an all-time 54-hole final performance).
Interestingly, it didn’t happen the way we imagined. After battling for four hits over a putter that kept failing him, it turned out that was the only thing keeping him from a truly disastrous performance in Round 1 at Winged Foot.
