Tiger Woods stumbles on Friday at Ridgewood
Fifteen months ago, if Tiger Woods had opened with a 65 at the Barclays, the game would have been over. Nobody would be wondering how he was going to do on Friday, we would all just expect him to do something equally as impressive in the second round, on his way to, yawn, another PGA Tour victory.
But 2010 has been as strange a year as ever in the golf world, and most of that has to do with Tiger. Starting the day 6-under, Woods teed off on the back nine to start his round, and made two birdies over his first nine holes. He was leading the first leg of the FedEx Cup, and everything seemed normal again.
That was, until Tiger turned to his second nine holes, and everything fell apart. He couldn't buy a putt with all the money he has, and ended the day with a very disappointing 2-over 73 that has him four shots back of the leaders.
That front nine, the same cluster of holes that Tiger went around in just 31 shots on Thursday, didn't give up a birdie to the top golfer in the land, and the four bogeys he made over his final eight holes dropped him on down the leaderboard, with a ton of names between him and another trophy.
"I hit a couple loose iron shots, but more than anything I didn't putt well," Tiger said after his round. "I just could not get my speed right. And when you get greens like this, you have to get the ball rolling quickly. I wasn't doing that."
After round one, Tiger was the talk of the golf world, but as we've seen with his game this season, there is hardly any similarity between rounds for Woods.
He will have another shot on Saturday to come out and do what he did so well for 27 holes, but couldn't figure out for the final nine.
