Tiger Woods misses PGA cut
By Bob Harig
He blasted yet another shot out of a bunker, and this time the sand blew back in his face, his arms and neck covered with grit, his golf ball trickling into the water on the other side of the green.
As Tiger Woods toweled off in the searing heat at the 11th hole Friday afternoon, he might as well have called ahead to have the jet fueled and waiting.
A third missed cut in a major championship — and first in his 14th PGA Championship — was inevitable as Woods fell too far behind the number necessary to play on the weekend at Atlanta Athletic Club.
Woods shot 3-over 73 and added to his opening-round 77 his total of 150, 10-over par, missing the cut by six strokes.
It was just the seventh time in 260 starts as a pro on the PGA Tour that Woods failed to advance after the 36-hole cut. And it was just his third missed cut as a pro in a major championship, the others coming at the 2006 U.S. Open and 2009 British Open.
After injury, there has now been insult, Woods’ game now at an eerily poor level that could be expected given all the time he’s been away this year. But it was jarring nonetheless.
“I think I was in, what, 20 bunkers in two days? And had four or five water balls,” Woods said. “So that’s not going to add up to a very good score. I hit the ball a lot better. I putted well the last two days and really felt great but I just never got to the green soon enough.”
Unclear is what comes next for the 14-time major champion.
Woods, 35, needed to make the cut at the PGA Championship not only to have a chance at contending for his first tournament title in nearly two years but also to extend his season on the PGA Tour. He did not commit to next week’s Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., which means he will be ineligible for any of the four-tournament FedEx Cup playoff events that begin in two weeks.
Any hope of advancing to the weekend vaporized in the sauna that has enveloped the PGA Championship when Woods double-bogeyed the 11th and then again at the 12th — his fifth double in two days.
“I think it’s a step back in the sense that I didn’t make the cut and I’m not contending in the tournament,” Woods said.
“But it’s a giant leap forward in the fact that I played two straight weeks, healthy. That’s great for our practice sessions coming up. We are going to now be able to work and get after it, something I haven’t been able to do. And I thought I could come in here and play the last couple of weeks and it get it done somehow, but I need some work,” he said.
Now what?
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