Tiger Woods Must Continue Cautious Pace to Contend for Green Jacket

After the first round of the 2013 Masters Tournament, Tiger Woods is sitting at two-under par. With an opening round 70, Woods is now four shots off of the lead and in prime position to make a run for his fifth career green jacket.

In order to maintain this pace, however, Woods must continue to play cautious golf during the preliminary rounds of play.

Woods remains one of the most skilled golfers in the world, if not the best. The fact that he's the No. 1 player in the world all over again provides numerical evidence to that belief.

With that being said, it's all about pace for Tiger.

Revisiting the 2011 Masters

We've seen this story before. Tiger Woods starts well, looks like he's going to win it all and then it all falls apart when he takes one too many risks.

That's exactly what happened in 2011.

During the 2011 Masters Tournament, Woods opened up with a score of 71. At 1-under, he entered the second round with reasonable confidence and responded with a 6-under 66.

Suddenly, Woods was three strokes off of the lead at 7-under par.

During the third round, however, Tiger collapsed. He struck bogey on the first, fourth, 11th and 18th hole, failing to break even on three separate Par 4 holes.

That sunk Woods to five-under and kept him seven shots off of the lead.

Woods managed to rebound with a masterful five-under 67, thus reaching 10-under for the tournament. Unfortunately, Charl Schwartzel managed to hit 14-under par after constructing a balanced scorecard.

The key for Woods is to follow that pattern.

Weather Concerns

According to AccuWeather.com, it is expected to rain in Augusta, Georgia from 1 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET on Apr. 12. This is an important piece of information, as Sean Martin of GolfWeek.com reports that Tiger Woods will tee off at 10:45 a.m. ET.

In other words, Woods will hit the course with the grounds still wet and the winds at 10 miles per hour and a 40 percent chance of rain (via AccuWeather).

In these conditions, Woods has the opportunity to move up the leaderboard solely by playing it safe. As some golfers look for the big shot, Woods can drive safely, find the greens and view pars as successful holes.

With this mindset, Woods could place himself in position to take calculated risks while others are gambling at a more extreme level.

As long as his putts are falling, there is no reason Woods cannot duplicate his two-under performance from the first round. This would push him to four-under par on a day in which the weather could limit the quality of play across the board.

It's all about pace for Woods, and this is the perfect way to to place himself in position to win big.