Tiger goes from ‘ugly start’ to share of Zozo lead
After a rocky start to Round 1 of the Zozo Championship, Tiger Woods finishes strong with a birdie on his final hole and cards a 6-under 64. (0:20)
CHIBA, Japan — The first three holes for Tiger Woods on Thursday were so bad that his caddie, Joe LaCava, joked he could have parred at least one of them.
Maybe so.
But it’s unlikely LaCava — or anyone in the Zozo Championship field, as it turned out — could go on the run Woods did to vault to the top of the leaderboard.
An opening tee shot in the water, another in the trees and a three-putt green were the way Woods ingloriously began his 2019-20 PGA Tour season. Then, he made nine birdies over the ensuing 15 holes to shoot a 6-under-par 64 at Accordia Golf Narashino Country Club.
“I certainly was not expecting to shoot 6 under after that start,” said Woods, whose 64 is his lowest since he shot 62 to open the 2018 BMW Championship at Aronimink. “That was a very ugly start.
“To be able to flip it like that, I felt if I could get to under par for that — I figure most of the guys would be about 2, 3 under par with the wind blowing as hard as it was today — that I wouldn’t be that far behind. It flipped, and I got hot and made a bunch of putts.”
Woods needed just 27 putts, and only one — at the seventh, a 30-footer — was long. For the round, Woods hit 15 greens in regulation despite hitting only three of 13 fairways.
It was good for a rare first-round lead, shared with U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland. The last time Woods owned a solo first-round lead was the 2009 PGA Championship.
Woods and Woodland have a one-shot advantage over Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, the second-most popular player in the field.
Woods’ start, however, could hardly have been worse.
Beginning on the rather benign par-4 10th, a dogleg left that is guarded by water, Woods was immediately conflicted about what to hit and finally selected a 5-wood that he hooked into the hazard.
“I wasn’t committed to it,” he said. “Our game plan was hit 5-wood all along, and I decided that I couldn’t cover the water with 5-wood, and the way I was hitting it on the range, I was hitting some spinner 5-woods. Maybe I need to hit a 3-wood and take the water out of play.
“Went back to the 5-wood after having a 3-wood in my hand, didn’t cover. So that was a lack of commitment on my part of what club to hit, what shot to hit, and on top of that, bad execution.”
Woods knocked his approach close but couldn’t get his par putt to drop. Then, he pulled hooked his tee shot at the par-4 11th into the trees, his ball bouncing back into an awkward lie in a bunker. Another bogey.
And then, he three-putted the 12th green, at which point Woods had three straight bogeys and was ahead of just one player in the field.
“I hadn’t hit a good shot yet,” he said.
But the round started to turn when he hit a couple of good shots on the 13th before going on a run. Woods birdied four of the last five holes on the side to turn in 1-under 35.
After a couple of close calls at the first and second holes, he made three straight birdies and five overall on the front side for a 29.
“I just tried to hang in there,” he said. “I was trying to turn the round from 3 over par to even par at the turn. And I made a bunch of putts. My putter has felt good. I’ve rolled it nicely. I’m just trying to give myself good looks at it. And I didn’t give myself any looks the first three holes. I felt my iron game was sharp and figured if I could get the ball in a position where I can attack, as soft as they are, I figured I make a few. And I made more than a few.”
Woods is making his PGA Tour season debut after a nine-week break that included left knee surgery on Aug. 20. It is his first tournament in Japan since he lost in a playoff at the 2006 Dunlap Phoenix to Padraig Harrington at an event he had won the previous two years. This is also the first official PGA Tour event in Japan.
The time away followed a disappointing summer for Woods, who won the Masters in April, then never contended in another tournament, plagued by back stiffness, an oblique injury and knee issues that he first acknowledged this week.
In six tournaments following the Masters, Woods missed two cuts, withdrew from another tournament and had a best finish of a tie for ninth at the Memorial Tournament in June.
Woods played with Tommy Fleetwood and Japan’s Satoshi Kodaira, who is ranked 186th in the world and admitted he was nervous teeing it up with Woods for the first time.
Some of that subsided when he saw Woods’ start.
“I thought ‘Wow, Tiger can start a tournament, bogey, bogey, bogey,”’ Kodaira said. “But, obviously, you saw that he played well the rest of the way. His iron shots looked like they were short shots. And he had such good rhythm from his driver on to his irons. I learned a lot from him today.”
Due to a poor weather forecast that predicts heavy rain all day Friday, tee times have been moved earlier, with the chance the round will be suspended.
“It’s going to be a grind,” Woods said. “There’s probably going to be a lot of golf on the weekend for all of us.”