Genesis Open: Tiger Woods saves first round with masterful short game

Tiger Woods survived the first round of the Genesis Open, overcoming his disastrous driving with a masterful short game.

Tiger Woods opened the week at the Genesis Open with some old-school bravado. While he opened up about changes to his game, he let some of the “old Tiger” come out. “It’s winning time,” he said, smiling but clearly entirely serious at the same time.

Thursday’s opening round at Riviera Country Club didn’t quite go as he planned, but some of the “old Tiger” came out on the course, too. And that’s what helped him avoid complete disaster in his second start of 2018.

Woods opened his day on the back nine, and got the gallery rolling with a birdie on the par-4 10th hole. After that, though, the day turned into a but more of a mess.

Hitting just eight of 14 fairways on the day, Woods found big trouble on the par-5 11th. Blasting his driver way to the right of the fairway, a lost ball forced him to re-tee. He made double bogey 7, and a bogey on No. 12 pushed him up into black numbers as quickly as he had started in the red.

Things weren’t all bad, however. Tiger has always had a legendary short game, and it was on full display at Riviera on Thursday. As bad as his driving looked, Woods also found just seven of 18 greens in regulation. That’s normally the recipe for a huge number, but Tiger was having none of that.

Woods got around with just 25 putts on the day, and he scrambled for par six times. He also ranked 12th in the field in strokes-gained putting.

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If it seems exceedingly simple, you’re not far off. If Tiger can keep the ball in play and hit even a few more greens, the scores are well within reach.

"“I’m not that far off to really putting some good numbers out there,” Woods said after the round. “I’ve got to clean up my card; too many bogeys out there. I’m not really worried about 11 [the ball in the tree], but I made too many bogeys. If I can just clean that up, I can start making my way up the board.”"

Easy, right? Well, for Tiger, it might actually be.

Remember all those videos of Tiger pitching and putting early in his rehab? That was the part of his game that got the worst in his truncated comeback last year. If he’s got that under control the way it looked yesterday, the rest will fall into place. Like he said, though, he needs to get those “reps” in.

Next: Does Tiger's mystique still intimidate the young guns on Tour?

Tiger knows that he needs to play into the weekend at Riviera, especially as he ramps up his schedule towards the Masters. Look for him to push up the leaderboard on Friday, and see a few more flashes of the Tiger of old.

Not just “old Tiger”.

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