Tiger finishes spherical 6 photographs behind lead at BMW
MEDINAH, Ailing. — The excellent news for Tiger Woods on Thursday throughout the opening spherical of the BMW Championship was that he seemed much better than every week earlier, when again stiffness and a strained indirect precipitated him to withdraw from the Northern Belief.
The dangerous information was regardless of some promising indicators, Woods’ 71 was nowhere close to the rating wanted to place him in place to advance to subsequent week’s Tour Championship.
Maybe that’s asking an excessive amount of at this level for a golfer who was enjoying simply his 14th aggressive spherical since profitable the Masters and has been missing match and observe repetitions.
Woods is 6 photographs again of leaders Justin Thomas and Jason Kokrak, who every shot 7-under-par 65 at Medinah Nation Membership, and in a tie for 50th place.
“It is simply not sharp,” he mentioned after making 4 birdies and three bogeys. “I am attempting to make modifications in my swing, and it is simply not fairly there but. And so it is simply a kind of issues. I would like reps, and I simply actually have not put in a number of reps.”
And therein lies the issue for Woods, whose 2018-19 season will come to an finish this weekend if he’s not capable of make an enormous transfer up the leaderboard.
Woods possible wants a end of no worse than 11th within the 69-player subject to maneuver up from 38th within the FedEx standings to 30th, the ultimate qualifying spot for the season-ending Tour Championship, the ultimate occasion of the FedEx Cup playoffs.
In tour projections, Woods truly fell to 47th.
“Once I received out right here, I assumed most likely 5 or 6 (beneath) could be main, however as soon as I received on the golf course and felt how tender the greens have been, it is like, ‘Hey, we have to go. We have to make birdies.'”
Woods began out properly sufficient, knocking an method from a fairway bunker to five ft for a birdie on the first gap, then rolling in a 40-footer on the third. However he short-sided himself and made bogey on the fourth, and after a two-putt birdie on the fifth, could not get something going. He three-putted the ninth, and made only one extra birdie, on the 11th. His closing bogey got here on No. 16 after a wayward drive.
For the day, Woods hit simply seven of 14 fairways, with 11 of 18 greens. He wanted 29 putts.
However in a big-picture sense, the day was successful. Woods, 43, withdrew from the Northern Belief final Friday and did not hit any full photographs till Wednesday.
“I did not really feel any tightness in my indirect in any respect, in order that was a optimistic, and I simply want to wash up my rounds and get going,” he mentioned. “Looks like the entire subject is beneath par. The golf course is tender. Although it is lengthy, it is simply gettable.”
Medinah is the location of two of Woods’ 15 main titles, the 1999 PGA Championship and the 2006 PGA Championship. He additionally performed on the shedding U.S. Ryder Cup group right here in 2012.
“I will need to make a number of birdies,” he mentioned. “There’s so many guys beneath par that I will need to shoot some low rounds simply to get again in it.”