If we’ve learned anything from watching Tiger Woods over the last couple of years, it’s that trying to predict how he’s going to play from week-to-week is darn near impossible.
After watching Woods blister the field at Bay Hill to pick up his first official win in more than two years, his game disappeared at the Masters (T-40) … and went MIA at the Wells Fargo Championship (MC) and the Players Championship (T-40).
No matter how much Woods talked up his game during the stretch, the words seemed hollow as he continued to struggle with swing. It was the main reason why nobody gave him much of a chance coming into the week — despite the fact that he’s won the tournament four time in his career.
But after taking two weeks off to work on his game, it appears he may have found two critical pieces of his game that were missing from his arsenal over the last two months: distance control and consistency. After hitting 12 greens in regulation on Thursday and going 3-under on Muirfield’s par-5s, Woods increased the level of consistency on Friday, hitting 14 greens in regulation and 11 fairways to post a 3-under 69 that moved him to 5-under, just one shot back of 36-hole leader Rory Sabbatini.
Even though he double-bogeyed a hole for the second straight day, Woods bounced back in hurry, stuffing an approach shot on the 15th and his tee shot on the 16th to pick up back-to-back birdies and stay in contention.
Woods certainly seems to have things under control at the minute, which is a far cry from the way he looked in his last three starts. And while it’d be easy to look at his stats and assume he’ll be a contender this weekend, you just never know which Tiger Woods is going to show up each day.
For the moment he’s looking a lot like the guy who won by five shots earlier this year at Bay Hill, but let’s wait and see what Saturday holds before we starting talking up his chances of picking up his fifth win at Jack’s place.