FARMINGDALE, N. Y. – Once again, the high drama at a major golf tournament was all about Tiger Woods. But this time, it had nothing…
FARMINGDALE, N. Y. – Once again, the high drama at a major golf tournament was all about Tiger Woods. But this time, it had nothing to do with winning. It was simply a matter of survival. Tiger was fighting to make the cut to play on the weekend.
Stunningly, he failed.
Just 33 days after he won the 2019 Masters, Tiger came crashing down to earth at the PGA Championship, shooting a 36-hole total of 5-over par to miss the cut by one stroke and finish a remarkable 17 shots behind his playing partner, tournament leader Brooks Koepka. Seventeen strokes separated the two after just 36 holes. Koepka was that good, and Tiger was that bad.
Tiger’s Masters glow has been extinguished. At 43, he looked nothing like the man who played so confidently down the stretch last month to win the Masters. Mistakes overwhelmed his play time and again. After hitting 10 of 14 fairways Thursday, he hit just three Friday. Three! You can’t expect to tame a beast of a golf course like Bethpage Black without putting the ball in the fairway.
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Tiger nonetheless came to the par-4 18th just needing a birdie to make the cut. Two terrible days on the course could be salvaged by three fine shots. His drive was a beauty, one of the three that didn’t end up in the rough. Only 113 yards were left to the pin. The stage was set for him.
Had this been a month ago, his wedge would have landed within 10 feet of the hole. But on this day, his approach was awful, landing short of the green, taking a bad bounce and stopping in the intermediate rough, 40 feet from the hole.
