egy on Saturday. Despite a comfortable pairing with friend
Jim Furyk, Woods played raggedly, his shots off just enough
to cause him peril. He three-putted No. 8 to go four over for
the day. Woods later bemoaned being between clubs on a lot
of approaches. “Just never quite had the right number,” he
said. Novosel noticed Woods’ tempo ratio varying later in
the round, which ended ignominiously with a stubbed chip
shot from a sticky lie that yielded a bogey on No. 18.
“You just need to hang around,” Woods said, appraising
his final-round prospects given that he
trailed Furyk and Graeme McDowell by
five. “First, you need to get off to a good
start. Get through the first six.”
On a gray, sweater-weather day when
a sea mist blew over the course, Woods
couldn’t get through No. 1 without being
nicked by a bogey after his 3-wood tee shot
caught the right rough. “Tough road ahead,
Tiger, but if anybody can do it, you can,”
said an encouraging spectator near the
second tee. But there was a bogey at the
second and a double at the third. Tee shots
narrowly missed the fairway, putts grazed
the lip. Woods was soon resigned to playing
for pride instead of the gold medal newly
named for Nicklaus. “This golf course is
just so demanding that [being] a fraction
off, you pay a price,” Woods said.
Publicly, Woods saw positives in the
balance sheet for his week, that his bad
shots weren’t that bad. “I was still in the
ballgame,” he said. “A lot of positives to be taken away from
this week, a lot positives.”
There weren’t, in fact, that many outright stinkers on
a track with tiny margins for error. His mistakes, though,
SOUR
SIXTEEN
There have been 16 major championships played since Tiger Woods
won his 14th professional major
title at the 2008 U.S. Open. Here’s
how he has fared during the longest
major drought of his career:
2008 British: DNP (injury)
2008 PGA: DNP (injury)
2009 Masters: T- 6
2009 U.S. Open: T- 6
2009 British: MC
2009 PGA: 2nd
2010 Masters: T- 4
2010 U.S. Open: T- 4
2010 British: T- 23
2010 PGA: T- 28
2011 Masters: T- 4
2011 U.S. Open: DNP (injury)
2011 British: DNP (injury)
2011 PGA: MC
2012 Masters: T- 40
2012 U. S. Open: T- 21
