Tiger Woods ignites crowd, surging at the Memorial Tournament

Tiger Woods gained some much-needed momentum – and gave the crowd some electrifying moments – in the second round of the Memorial Tournament. Can he play his way into contention this weekend at Jack’s Place?

Tiger Woods is playing his ninth PGA TOUR event of 2018 this week at the Memorial Tournament. While he’s still looking for a week to “put it all together”, he does seem to be working his way closer with almost every start. On Friday at Muirfield Village, he took a big step in the right direction, and the fans were partying like it was 1999.

All silly Prince references aside, Woods had two very different paths he could have taken with the cut looming. After Thursday’s opening round, he was at even par, and he had to make a move just to be confident he would play the weekend.

Jack Nicklaus even weighed in on Tiger’s game ahead of the tournament, noting that he believes Woods has to “learn to win again”. He compared the 14-time major winner’s struggles with some of his own, indicating that sometimes it just takes a few shots to “remember”.

"“We all have to learn how to win again,” Nicklaus said. “I remember in ’86 Masters I hadn’t won for a couple years, and I got to the last round and I got into the back nine and I kept struggling, I couldn’t get really going the front nine. And finally I made a putt at 9 and finally I remembered how to play. But … I struggled with getting [to learn] how to play. And I holed a couple of putts and all of a sudden you remember, particularly if you’ve been a champion at one time, you’ll remember and you have that to draw on.That’s what I had to draw on. Tiger has it to draw on. But he has got to get through the barrier of not having done it for awhile. When you haven’t won, that always happens and that’s human nature.”"

Was Tiger Woods’s outstanding eagle hole-out one of those shots?

Tiger has had his share of memorable moments at Muirfield Village over the years. He may have added to that record on Friday, when he got the crowd popping like the Tiger of old.

After a bogey on his first hole of the day set him to +1 for the tournament, Woods flipped a switch. Refusing to go down that easily, Woods finished his front nine with birdies on Nos. 3, 5, 7 and 9 to make the turn at -3. Then came the moment that lit the crowd on fire.

If you haven’t seen it, just watch.

Ladies and gentlemen: Tiger Woods. Is there anybody out there who thinks he isn’t still a massive draw for live galleries? Think again.

The best part of that shot, of course, is something that you might not have seen right away.

If you’re deep into golf Twitter – and why wouldn’t you be, really? – that’s the literal definition of “#TourSauce”. It just doesn’t get any better.

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That’s also the type of shot that, in years past, would have led to Tiger birdieing basically every hole on the way in. At 5-under for the day, this day had all the makings of something in the 62 range. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas.

Woods knocked his approach tight on 12, but a 90-minute weather delay began before he could putt out. When action resumed, he missed the six-footer for birdie. He made one more coming in, but a late bogey brought him home at 67.

Tiger said his back wasn’t giving him problems, but he just “wasn’t all the way there”. Still, he’s just six shots off the lead held by Kyle Stanley and Joaquin Niemann. This is also his best 36-hole score thus far in 2018. There are good signs here, if you look for them.

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Will he be able to make a bigger charge on moving day? That will rely almost entirely on his putter. In Friday’s second round, Woods gave up nearly four strokes to the field on the greens, and he’s been inconsistent at best for much of this season. that needs to change in a hurry if he’s going to make the turnaround.

As Jack said, though, Tiger is showing so much of what made him successful before that it’s hard to believe that he won’t get there again. If he can carry even a little bit of Friday’s momentum into the weekend, we could be in for a real treat.