Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth Like Three Bears at PGA

The star grouping at the PGA on Thursday morning was Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth. Their scoring was reminiscent of the three bears. Woods was uncomfortably high. McIlroy was pleasingly low. Spieth was unhappily in the middle.

Woods struggled a bit more than anticipated and blamed his iron play.

McIlroy definitely fared better than the other two, score-wise, with what was the low round of the day, 65.

Spieth just couldn’t get anything going. He made three bogeys on his first nine and finally settled down and finished at 2-over par.

Regardless, the popular threesome drew enormous galleries all day.

Tiger Woods looked quite disappointed after he finished. During the round, he said he had difficulty getting his shots to the green and that he struggled with a two-way miss.

“I drove it well, but my iron shots were not very good. I didn’t get the ball very close,” he said to the media after his round. “It was a frustrating day.”

His self-described “bad iron shots” didn’t allow him to get close enough to the flagsticks for realistic birdies. He just got in enough bad places to come out with a 74.

The all-time great also limped noticeably and admitted to problems with his right leg, which was severely injured in an automobile crash 15 months ago.

“I just can’t load it,” he said. “Loading hurts, pressing off it hurts, and walking hurts, and twisting hurts.”

In other words, it hurts on the backswing, the downswing, the follow-through, and any time he moves.

Undaunted, he had a plan to play to specific spots on the golf course while his fellow competitors were blasting as far as possible. At least that was what it seemed like to him.

“We were talking about it today, Joey and I. The days of the Lee Janzens and the Scott Simpsons and the Faldos of the world, playing that kind of golf is gone,” he explained.

While Jordan Spieth and Tiger Woods struggled, Rory McIlroy flourished on Thursday.

Rory McIlroy, however, was the opposite side of the coin. He had seven birdies and two bogeys. He was pleased to have a fast start in a major.

“I’ve been playing well coming in here. I’ve been carrying some good form,” he said to media after he was finished.

“I feel like this course, it lets you be pretty aggressive off the tee if you want to be, so I hit quite a lot of drivers out there and took advantage of my length and finished that off with some nice iron play and some nice putting,” McIlroy explained.

He said he was just sticking to his game plan, and it was working.

Rory McIlroy had two bogies at the par threes on the front nine of the course which he played as his backside. The difficulties occurred at the 6th and the 8th. At six, his tee shot ended up off the green to the right, no doubt avoiding the stream that flows along the left side of the hole. He had a 50-foot chip shot which really did not go far enough. He had what was nearly a nine-footer and didn’t make it.

At eight, he was in a greenside bunker off the tee and missed a putt of less than two feet for par. Otherwise, he would have posted 64. Coulda, shoulda.

When asked about playing in what are being called “supergroups” of players, McIlroy said he had looked forward to it. He said it was easier at Southern Hills than in the final round at the Tour Championship in 2018 ( where he was paired with Tiger Woods) because Southern Hills seemed more spacious than East Lake due to the wide corridors of the course.

Well, certainly in 2018, when Tiger Woods was making his comeback from his most recent back surgery, it would have seemed claustrophobic to McIlroy. They were the final pairing.  On the last hole, the crowd kind of got away from security and emerged onto the 18th fairway following the golfers down the hill to the green like fans do at the final hole of the British Open. It was just a little bit disconcerting.

Interestingly, there’s a chance McIlroy’s scoring on day one was a result of taking daughter Poppy to see his picture in the media center on Wednesday where he was overheard to have said to her, “That’s when Daddy was good.”

Jordan Spieth, who started on the 10th, made three bogeys in his first nine holes and was probably lucky to finish at just 2-over par.  He was not asked for comments. Spieth is currently tied for 58th and could be in danger of missing the cut in his second straight major. Both he and Tiger Woods definitely have to mount comebacks to play the weekend.

After a first-round 65, “daddy” is probably still pretty darn good.