Tiger Woods lights up gallery, makes cut at Farmers Insurance Open
Tiger Woods didn’t make things easy for himself on Friday at the Farmers Insurance Open, but a masterful short game and some late fireworks pushed him into the weekend.
Tiger Woods is back.
No, he’s not the Tiger Woods of old, but he’s not necessarily an “old Tiger Woods” either. He looked like the latter for much of the second round at the Farmers Insurance Open, but we got a handful of vintage Tiger moments when he needed them most.
Woods opened the tournament on Thursday with a mostly flat opening round at the monstrous South Course, firing a level-par 72 that left him seven shots off the lead. His putting was not on point, as he failed to make a single one from outside 10 feet. Still, Woods said he felt mostly good to be back in tournament shape, and simply needed to build up his endurance.
Friday, however, was an entirely different beast. Torrey Pines North is known for being a much tighter track than its South counterpart, but Woods took the – ahem – “scenic route” for much of the day.
Hitting just three of 14 fairways, Woods’s entire game – as well as his body – was put to the test. Starting on the back nine, Woods made double bogey on the par-4 13th after blasting his tee shot out of play and taking a drop. Five pars to the turn left Woods needing some magic on the back to have any hope of playing the weekend.
Of course, as we’ve seen so many times over the years, challenge Tiger and he’ll answer, or flame out magnificently trying.
Woods found himself needing to get back under par to have any shot of playing the weekend. Three under in nine holes may have seemed like a tall order for the 14-time major champion at first, but he answered the call.
A long birdie on No. 1 gave us a classic – if understated – fist pump, but it absolutely ignited the massive gallery following Woods.
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A pair of birdies on Nos. 5 and 7 got Woods back into red numbers, but an untimely bogey on the par-3 8th pushed him back to even par, one off the cut line.
What followed was Tiger in his purest form. A 556-yard par-5 to close the round was no match for Woods, who reached the green comfortably in two. A long lag from around 80 feet left Woods a simple tap-in birdie, and it was off to the weekend.
What’s next? Unfortunately, Woods is still ten shots off the lead, held by Ryan Palmer at -11. But considering this is his first made cut on the PGA TOUR since 2015, it’s going to provide a big boost for Woods’s outlook.
Next: Tiger Woods: Farmers Insurance Open will provide measure for 2018
We won’t get too far ahead of ourselves here. There’s still 36 holes to be played at Torrey South, a daunting undertaking for anybody, much less a 42-year-old coming off of major surgery for the fourth time. But it’s a major step in the right direction, and one that should shed more light on his outlook for the rest of the year.