Tiger Woods works better, but his game faltered Thursday in the first round of the British Open on the course of Saint Andrews where the American returned a card of +6, 14 shots from the head. “I haven’t been good enough on the greens. All my putts have been short,” lamented the 46-year-old who is recovering from a car accident in February 2021 in which he nearly lost his right leg.
Thursday, he started his journey with a double bogey from hole N.1. He still chained bogeys on holes 3 and 4, then conceded a second double bogey on 7. In seven holes, he was at +6 and failed to improve his card on the next eleven holes.
“I don’t feel like I hit the ball that badly, but I found myself in bad places,” he said. Or funny things happened to me”, like this excellent very first shot which stopped in a divot, a clod of earth torn by the head of a club, making the next shot very complicated.
Eliminated on Friday?
” It’s like that. The links are like that and this course is like that. I had my chances to turn things around, but I didn’t,” he commented. The player with fifteen Majors, with three British Opens including two at Saint Andrews, made his first birdie on the 9th hole, triggering a round of applause and encouragement from the public which finally made him open his jaws, until he won a smile.
But his return, although less calamitous, was not brilliant either (two birdies for three bogeys). And the par 4 of hole 18 was a reflection of his ordeal: a few centimeters near his first shot did not stabilize on the plateau of the flag and the ball fell back at the bottom of a mound. His eagle putt didn’t go far but still wide, his birdie putt went close without falling and he finished with a par.
“Tomorrow (Friday in the 2nd round) I will have to play 66 (six shots under par, editor’s note) if I want to have a chance of making the cut. It has obviously already been done, including today “in the first round by leader Cameron Young (64) and his runner-up Rory McIlroy (66), noted Woods.
“It’s up to me to go tomorrow and do it, he hammered. I have to do it”.
