Tiger Woods at Players Championship 2015: Thursday Leaderboard Score, Reaction

Tiger Woods battled at The Players Championship on Thursday. He battled himself. He battled the TPC Sawgrass course. Perhaps he battled the still lengthy divide between the player he once was and the player he currently is.

But he battled, eventually finishing with a one-over 73 on the afternoon. It looked at times as though he was courting disaster and at other times like he had tamed the course for the day, but in the end he had to settle for the mediocre score.

Jason Sobel recapped Woods' afternoon nicely:

As Justin Ray of Golf Channel noted, it was another disappointing start from the formerly dominant golfer:

Woods was clearly frustrated after the round.

"I didn't get much out of this round," he noted on Golf Channel's broadcast. "That's probably as good as I could have scored today."

It was his driver that really let him down, as he finished with a driving accuracy percentage of 57.14 and hit just 55.56 percent of greens in regulation, per PGATour.com. As Ryan Lavner of Golf Channel noted, that's the aspect of his game that is currently so surprising:

That left Woods well off the pace for the Championship. Here's a look at the top of the leaderboard.

Woods' up-and-down day started almost immediately, as he bogeyed the first hole. He recovered nicely, however, with two pars and a birdie on No. 4 to pull back even, which you can see below.

He parred the next three holes and looked to be battling through some of his struggles.

Those struggles reared their ugly heads on No. 8, however, as he somehow put the ball in a water hazard that most players competing at TPC Sawgrass avoid, per Ray:

That would lead to a double bogey, though Woods did finish out the front nine with a birdie to finish one over for the first half of his day.

As Sobel noted, it was another example of Woods leaving spectators scratching their heads a bit:

Despite battling himself at times, Woods was better on the back nine, with birdies on Nos. 14, 16 and 17 and a lone bogey on No. 15. 

Here's his birdie on No. 14.

And here he is impressing on the 16th.

After Woods got back to even par on the back nine, Sobel was feeling more optimistic about his performance:

But much of his good work was undone on the 18th, as his tee shot landed in the water. He would double-bogey the hole, leaving him at one-over for the day.

Indeed, his final score of one-over seemed indicative of his play on the day. He just never seemed to quite get in a rhythm, and poor shots quickly undid any positives he established. He was clearly fighting himself for much of the afternoon and was never quite able to win that contest.

Still, the day could have been much, much worse, and there were indeed glimpses of promise in his afternoon at TPC. If Woods is able to eliminate the major errors Friday and stay out of the water—and if he can improve his driving—he can still get back in this tournament.

All is not lost for Woods, in other words. But if he spends another round fighting himself the entire way, he simply won't be able to shoot his way back into this tournament. The course simply isn't forgiving enough for that to happen.