Woods vs. Harrington in Firestone Rematch at East Lake

Golf writer Andy Reistetter is on site at The TOUR Championship Presented by Coca-Cola at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia and is providing daily reports covering the action both inside and outside the ropes.

O.K., so it is not Sunday afternoon at a World Golf Championship event.

It's not Woods versus Rocco Mediate during a Monday playoff for the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines.

But is sure felt like it today at East Lake, with the marquee Woods and Harrington twosome in the next-to-last pairing at The Tour Championship/FedExCup Playoff Finale.

Call it what you like, but it was dramatic. It was intense. It was playoff golf at its best, and I can't wait until Sunday afternoon.

You know you are a golf nut when you used to enjoy when the football season came. All the golf pretenders left the golf courses to you and your pals when they went inside and started watching college football on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday. Talk about three-and-a-half hour rounds in all their glory!

But then Commissioner Finchem and the PGA TOUR had to invent the golf playoffs to stretch the season, interest, and revenues into September. Now, we are as hopeless as those football guys and missing out on our autumnal exercise on the links.

It was classic Woods early on, with razor-sharp irons and makeable birdie putts slipping by on the edge of the hole. Then the frustrated three-putt bogey on No. 5 that really got "da man"—as they call him here in Atlanta—pissed off.

You knew a streak was coming and sure enough, it happened, when Woods birdied three in a row to close out the front nine.

The birdie on No. 7 coupled with a Harrington bogey erased the Irishman's two-stroke lead. Ditto the same two-stroke swing with a Stewart Cink birdie and a Sean O'Hair bogey moments later in the final pairing of the day on the same seventh hole.

It was O'Hair, Cink, Woods, and Harrington dodging up and down the leaderboard on the front nine.

Whose tournament would it be on this no-cut Friday? An exclusive 30-member field earned their chances for the $10 million FedExCup prize with outstanding performance over the prior 36 weeks of competition.

We all knew "who" it would be. Tiger is always on first base when it comes to leaderboards. whether it is an "Abbott and Costello" flick or not. No worries in Who-Ville come Christmastime in September on the PGA TOUR.

Harrington matched Tiger's birdie on the eighth hole, but Tiger's birdie on the ninth put him at 5-under par, giving him the lead. Cink would match his birdie on nine and a front-nine 2-under par 33, briefly tying Tiger at the top.

Tiger overcooked his draw on No. 10, though it landed softly on the outside downward slope of the left fairway bunker precariously close to a perimeter out of bounds fence. The world's top golfer recovered and made par.

British Open Champion Cink sailed two tee balls in succession over the same fence at his home club moments later. He never recovered and made an eight, posting a 4-over par 39 on the back nine, finishing only four strokes back tied for seventh.

Woods and Harrington were enjoying themselves and chuckling quite a bit as they walked together between shots on the front nine. It almost appeared that they were laughing at the absent rules official and toying with the tour as to how slow they could play their round in defiance of what happened at Firestone.

Before they even chipped their third shots to the 10th green, the group ahead of them was teeing off the 12th hole.

Come Sunday afternoon, it is unlikely that any rules official will put them on the clock with the high stakes of the FedExCup on the line. This is no ordinary week on tour: It's the climax of the year.

Remember: small field, difficult golf course, anything can happen quickly.

The unbelievable did happen to Tiger Woods on the closing four holes. After a 20-footer to save par on the difficult par-4 14th, Tiger lofted a tremendous second shot to the par-5 15th that gracefully cleared the front bunker, landed softly and looked like it wanted to roll in the hole for an albatross.

It did not go in, rolling to a stop four feet away from the hole. Nor did Tiger's eagle putt go into the hole, as he settled for a two-putt birdie and a two-stroke lead over Harrington.

Unbelievably, he missed another short one inside three feet for birdie on the next green. Instead of running away from the field, Tiger was snuggling up to it. O'Hair recovered by birdieing the same two holes to post an even par round, and remain at 4-under after two rounds.  

On the 17th hole it looked like Harrington would reverse the two-stroke swing from earlier in the day on No. 7. But Tiger made a downhill right-to-left putt for par and Harrington missed from inside four feet for birdie.

Tiger would bogey the last hole, a 230-yard par 3, after pulling a 4-iron up against the grandstand. After taking a drop, he flopped a shot and settled for a round=ending bogey. Harrington almost drained a 50-footer to tie Woods but finished at 4-under in a second-place tie with O'Hair.

Woods' 2-under-68 followed an opening 67, and enabled him to leapfrog O'Hair, Cink, and Harrington to lead The TOUR Championship and the race for the FedExCup.

Ernie Els (fourth place), Kenny Perry (T5), and David Toms (T12) shot 4-under-66s today, matching O'Hair's lone 66 on Thursday as the tournament's lowest round.

Bottom line, it is Woods versus Harrington again on Saturday in the final pairing at the TOUR Championship.

They have now played in the same group eight times this year, with Woods bettering Harrington seven times and averaging three strokes better per round.

Harrington has not won on the PGA TOUR in over a year dating back to the 2008 PGA last August at Oakland Hills CC outside Detroit. If he were to win The TOUR Championship, he would be the first European golfer to do so.

With rain forecasted for the late afternoon, the tee times have been moved up to the morning. Woods and Harrington will start at 10:20 a.m. 

Let's see if this one goes down to the wire and who will kiss the FedExCup trophy come Sunday afternoon.

Andy Reistetter is a freelance golf writer. He follows the PGA TOUR volunteering and working part time for NBC Sports, CBS Sports, and The Golf Channel. Having attended the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, Honda Classic, WGC-CA Championship, Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard, Masters Tournament, Verizon Heritage, Zurich Classic of New Orleans, THE PLAYERS Championship, U.S. Open at Bethpage, AT&T National, British Open at Turnberry, PGA at Hazeltine, The Barclays, and The Deutsche Bank Championship; the TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola at Eastlake is Andy's 15^th event of the season.  

He resides in Jacksonville Beach, Florida near the PGA TOUR headquarters and home of The PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach. He enjoys pursuing his passion for the game of golf and everything associated with it. He can be reached through his website www.MrHickoryGolf.net or by e-mailing him to [e-mail]