Tiger Woods: Does His 2nd-Round 66 Mean His Game Is Back?

Tiger Woods' golf game has been in the depths in 2015, but this week, he may have turned the corner. He's close to the lead at the Quicken Loans National, one of the two tournaments he hosts, and, as everyone knows, there's nothing like Tiger in the hunt. It could make for a spectacular weekend.

"I hit the ball really well today," he said. "I was very pleased with that and made a few putts, but also I missed a bunch, too. This could have been one of those really low rounds."

He expected that he would be no more than three shots behind the lead at the end of the day.

"I'm in a good spot hitting the weekend," he added.

While he played well, Woods did have some bloopers, including a tee shot that he said went about 90 yards on the 14th. It actually traveled 161 yards, and he didn't play the rest of the par five much better, three-putting from about 60 feet for bogey. He started on the back nine and credited the errors on the 14th with helping him score on subsequent holes.

"I should have made bogey there," he said. "I hit it on the green and three-putted. After that, kind of got me kick-started a little bit. Got me a little fired up. Got me a little more focused on what I'm doing out there instead of just hitting a shot."

After that, the old Tiger magic was back. He birdied the 15th and 18th, chipped in for birdie on the par-three fourth and, as he says, took care of business on the other two par fives, making birdie on both of those. The course is a par 71 and has only three par-five holes.

He was not surprised by his good play.

"I have been through this before, and you make changes to the game. It takes a little time sometimes," he said. "It's just a matter of time before things start to click in and get more jelled and things that—the new patterns become more natural."

He said it's never an overnight transition.

"People want the immediate fix, the one tip that's going to work for the rest of their life. It doesn't work that way. Takes time to build it," he added.

As good as the 66 was, his score could have been lower.

"I had four lip-outs on my front nine for birdies so I wasn't—I wasn't hitting bad putts; they just weren't going in," he insisted. "I made my share on my back nine and especially that bomb on 8. That was a bit lucky but I'll take it."

The putt on the eighth hole was from what we have come to know as Tiger Woods' ridiculous length: 35 feet. He did hit a couple of putts beyond the hole.

"I didn't mean to hit it four, five feet by, but it rolled out a little more than I thought they would," he admitted. "But I've taken more of the aggressive lines. I've just felt—I felt very comfortable hitting the putts."

His driver was also his friend for a change. He hit just under 78 percent of the fairways and landed many shots right where they needed to be, strategically. He missed the fairway on the fifth and eighth but still made birdies on those holes.

Woods also hit some irons close, including the one at the 15th to just over three feet from the hole, the shot at the first to four feet and at the ninth to about four feet.

He said his improved chipping was a product of hard work, mainly earlier in the year.

"For three days in a row, I hit about 2,000 chips a day to try and fix it and finally got it to where it was good enough to play at Augusta, and I almost pulled it off," he said. "And so, yeah, you have to go through moments like that. You got to dig it out of the dirt and put in the time. There's no easy fix. It's just logging the time."

When asked about adding more tournaments, he said, "Hopefully I can play next week at Bridgestone if everything goes well this week, and then we'll see about Wyndham after that and hopefully I'll be in the playoffs, and we'll move from there."

In other words, don't count him out for this week, and don't count him out for the rest of the tournaments this year. He might win this week, and if he does, he'll qualify for the WGC-Bridgestone. Should that happen, as they say in the PGA Tour promotional messages, anything's possible.

With eight victories at Firestone already, should he make it to Akron, Ohio, he has to be considered a contender, if not a favorite.

Kathy Bissell is a Golf Writer for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand or from official interview materials from the PGA Tour, USGA, R&A or PGA of America.