Tiger Woods at Masters 2015: Grading Tiger's Round 2 Performance
Ironic that this time—18 years after he set the Augusta National Golf Club ablaze as a 21-year-old—a nearing-40 Tiger Woods might have to sit and watch another youngster follow his Masters blueprint.
But that doesn’t mean the old man hasn’t got some game left of his own.
Shaking off a mediocre opening-round 73, the four-time green-jacket champion rebounded to fire a three-under 69 on Friday that punched his ticket for a weekend’s worth of retro tournament coverage.
While he didn’t quite wake the echoes of a decade of major championship dominance that’s now five-plus years behind him, he did show he’s come a long way since walking off a course two months ago burdened by the same sorts of issues plaguing duffers on courses across America.
“It was a solid day,” he told ESPN after the round. “I gave myself plenty of looks out there. Overall, I made some good par putts to keep my round together.”
And hey, if it turns out a whippersnapper like Jordan Spieth can’t close the deal…who knows?
"But there is that old edge just below the surface," USA Today's Nancy Armour wrote. "When he walked off the eighth green after picking up his third birdie on the front nine, he wore the Cheshire cat grin that used to be as much his trademark as the red shirt on Sunday."
It would take an epic collapse by Spieth for Woods to win his fifth Masters title. But it won't be long before he's back on top of the leaderboard.
Of course, it'd be unfair to assess a 39-year-old version of Woods to either himself, or Spieth, at 21.
But measuring him alongside himself in the last half-decade and nearly everyone else in the field born prior to July 27, 1993 (really...Spieth was three when Tiger won the first time?!?) seems a fair way to critique what we saw Friday. Woods' injury struggles this year and his long layoff were also taken into account.
Given that as a guide, click through to see how we saw Tiger’s second 18.
Driving: B
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After Thursday’s uneven first round that included a bogey at No. 1, the Tiger-centric portion of the golf world held its breath to see how he’d start the second.
Turns out it needn’t have worried.
Woods launched a pretty arc off the tee and followed suit for the majority of the holes that followed, hitting 10 of 14 fairways for the second straight day. However, he did find the rough on a few occasions and was unable to set himself up for a cluster of four of five holes where a birdie was a real possibility.
Iron Play: A
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Over the course of a year, going 14-of-18 when it comes to greens in regulation is going to win a lot of golf tournaments. Or, perhaps more importantly, it won’t lose them.
Woods’ aforementioned consistency off the tee kept him in the short grass for the majority of Friday’s round and enabled him to utilize his short game—long a strength, but recently a weakness—from good positions.
As mentioned previously, he striped the fairway on No. 1 to get the round started and kept himself out of major trouble throughout, save for a rendezvous with a tree on No. 13. And in the moments when he did veer toward the erratic, he was able to save shots and avoid the ugly hole that would prompt a death spiral.
Around the Greens: B+
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Whenever one part of the package let him down on a hole on Friday, another compensated.
Or the opposite.
After a good tee shot on No. 2, Woods hit into a bunker. He then blasted out more than 10 feet by the hole. One hole later, he followed a mediocre tee shot with a strong chip that left a birdie putt.
And so it went throughout for Woods. In fact, the very next hole, No. 4, might have been the glue that held the whole thing together for the day. He left a tee shot short of the green and was faced with a tricky chip over a bunker to a tightly nested pin.
On Thursday, he bogeyed the hole. And had he done that again on Friday, a 69 might have been another 73. But he knocked it close, drained the par putt and kept us all interested.
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Putting: B
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He came into Friday averaging 29.5 putts per round, so, given that as a norm, 28 is solid.
But even Woods himself would concede that had even just a few two-putt holes been reduced to one-putt holes, the vibe heading to Saturday would be a lot different.
The 10-footer for birdie on No. 1 and a 30-footer for birdie on No. 7 were highlight-worthy. But several two-putt holes, including real birdie chances at 3, 6, 10, 12 and 15, kept him from a really low round.
"It was hard. You expect certain putts to roll out, but they're not rolling out," he told ESPN. "They just don't have quite the same rollout and especially some of the downhill putts. We left a couple short coming down the hills, and so you've got to make the adjustments. And our group didn't really do a very good job of it."
Course Management: B+
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Woods hit 10 of 14 fairways in regulation. He hit 14 greens in regulation.
And he failed to get up and down for par just once, making his lone bogey on No. 6.
All the elements that make a good, solid, if not spectacular, round of golf.
"Proud of what I've done, to be able to dig it out the way I have,'' he told ESPN. "To basically change an entire pattern like that and put it together and put it in a position where I can compete in a major championship like this is something I'm very proud of."
Final Grade: A-
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He isn't exactly in position for a weekend charge, given a double-digit stroke deficit, but a return to relevance through 36 holes has to be considered at least a moral victory.
That's especially true since he hadn't even decided until this week that he was going to play.
"Anything can happen here," he told ESPN. "You can play well here and shoot over par. I've been there before. Then again, there's a pretty big separation right now between first and third. I didn't have that back in 1997."
While this was not the vintage Tiger many have waited so long to see, Friday's round was ultimately an impressive showing given the injuries and inconsistencies Woods has dealt with recently.
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