Tiger Woods storms his way up the leaderboard with his best round at an Open since 2006 win
In the wild, the tiger’s roar has a terrifying power to paralyse the animal that hears it. On the course, golf’s version of a ‘Tiger roar’, that low, rolling thunder of crowd noise that rumbles across the links whenever Tiger Woods starts peppering the pins at an Open, has much the same effect on his rivals. For all that the players try to stay locked in their private bubbles, it is a sound that triggers an awareness of the merciless predator in their midst.
Nobody outside a two-mile radius of Woods yesterday could have failed to notice the commotion he created. After two days of stealthily stalking, he pounced, fangs bared and claws tearing at his prey. It was the closest approximation this sport offered to a big cat ambush. Remember the days when Woods used to do this as a matter of routine, staring down his approach shots with a contented little club-twirl? Well, here at Carnoustie, that man was back, exploiting the flat-calm conditions and carving out a quite brilliant 66 to set this tournament ablaze. It was his lowest round at an Open since Hoylake 2006, when, in similarly burned-out conditions, he won. No wonder he could hardly stop smiling afterwards. “I’ve got a chance at this,” he said. “I didn’t want to be too far back. And five under par is definitely in reach.”
After a slow-burning front nine, Woods detonated his charge around the turn, reeling off three successive birdies from the ninth to give those in his wake an almighty fright. It is always about the body language with Woods. Whenever a shot turns out even slightly different from the one he envisaged in his mind’s eye, he pulls a face as if he has just swallowed a fly. Otherwise, he holds his follow-through in the style of one posing for a painting.
This was the Woods who prowled the Angus fairways, watching rapt as his second shot at the 10th arrowed through the air and then checked up mere inches from the pin for a tap-in birdie. Astonishingly, it was the first round that Woods had posted in the 60s at an Open since 2007, the last time the championship was staged at Carnoustie. For all its many highlights, it could ultimately have been even better, with a birdie putt at the 13th coming within a blade of grass of dropping, and his five-iron into the par-three 16th drifting by inches from the perfect line, finishing in an awkward spot in a swale. Cue his first three-putt of the day, his first dropped shot, and a loud curse in response.
It should be a mere quibble, though, in the narrative of an extraordinary day. The times when Woods could pull off these mesmerising weekend surges were thought to be long gone, steeped in sepia. Instead, he proved at 42 that he had one more comeback left to wage. With his back limber again after successful disc fusion surgery, Woods showed here that he could still let his drives rip with the best of them.
The restraint of the first two days, when he stuck stubbornly with his two-iron hybrid off the tee, was cast aside as he switched to a mode of maximum aggression. At the 11th, a par-four measuring 382 yards, he lashed at the ball with such ferocity that he nearly drove the green. Where clubhead speed is supposed to diminish with age, Woods, once a wannabe Navy Seal and still obsessed with his fitness training, has somehow added to his.
A feature of Woods’ stirring resurgence at this Open has been his accuracy. At his very nadir in 2015, when he shot 85 at Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial Tournament, an event he had won seven times, most of his problems could be attributed to his woeful waywardness. For 54 holes at Carnoustie, Woods straightened himself out ‒ except, alas, for the very last of them.
Looking for an exclamation point on a glorious day, Woods tried to drill a two-iron iron up the 18th into the breeze. But it was a horribly clunking contact, the ball looping left into deep rough and stopping just a few feet from the Barry Burn. Woods, wisely, accepted the reprieve, resisting any rushes of blood from the Jean Van de Velde playbook, laying up and sinking a nerve-testing six-footer for par. “That was big for me not to finish with two bogeys on the last three holes, playing as well as I did,” he said. “I didn’t really hit a bad shot until the last. The course was gettable, I had control of the ball, and I made some longer putts. The whole day was good ‒ it has been a few years since I have felt like this at a major. Given what has happened over the last few years, I didn’t know if this would ever happen again.”
Paul Lawrie's hole-by-hole guide to Carnoustie
What now, one wonders. The 15th major title for which he has been waiting over a decade? Woods, for the moment, is far too canny to entertain such talk. “We’re not there yet,” he said, with a knowing grin. “I know what you’re trying to say in asking, but let me try to get there first. Then ask me again.”
Of all the giddying numbers that frame his career, one of the more striking is that Woods has won all 14 of his major titles having led into the final round. That luxury has been denied him here, but his remains much the most luminous name on a stacked leaderboard. It could hardly be more of a fillip for golf. Just over a year ago, the most searing image we had of Woods was a mugshot issued by the Jupiter Police Department, a haunted, haggard figure dosed up on prescription medications to ease his back pain. Today, he is firmly in contention for a fourth Claret Jug. Whatever happens this afternoon, it is a source of profound pleasure to realise that there are more chapters in golf’s greatest story still waiting to be written.
