A young fan in the crowd at Riviera tried to warn media and officials that Tiger Woods was soon to start walking through a busy crowd after finishing his second round Friday at the Genesis Invitational.
“Tiger’s coming!”
Good point, kid. But the question is, will he stay around for the weekend at Riviera Country Club?
Woods, the 15-time major winner doubling as tournament host, shot a three-over 74 at Riviera to drop from a promising two-under-par to one over. Teeing off No. 10 Friday morning, Woods battled to an even par front nine with birdies at the par-3 14th and par-5 17th. But the 82-time PGA Tour winner fell away with sloppy mistakes on his back nine. Among those was putting it straight into the famed bunker in the middle of the green on the par-3 sixth, one of three back-nine bogeys that halted his momentum.
“If I chipped it up on top, there’s a chance that it could actually come back to the front part of the green,” Woods said of the decision to putt around, rather than chip it over, the bunker. So I did that. I was trying to give myself a chance at making par and at worst bogey.”
Woods also made bogeys at No. 8, where he drove it into a fairway bunker, and No. 9, where he left his approach short into the greenside bunker and failed to save par. He ranked near the bottom of the leaderboard for strokes gained: putting on Friday, with his 36 putts covering a total of just 55 feet.
“I just blocked the [putts]; they were just bad putts,” he said. “They were not very hard, I had good reads. I brought [caddie] Joey [LaCava] in on a couple of them and I just hit bad putts. So I could have easily got off to a very hot start and I did not. Then the middle part of the round I could have turned it around a little bit, and I did not.”
Woods was 10 shots off the lead (Keith Mitchell maintained his overnight lead with a 69 moving him to nine under) when he finished Friday at lunchtime, but it’s more about those beneath Woods on the leaderboard. Woods was one shot outside the projected cut line of even par shortly after he finished, with 67 players at even par or better.
That means Woods needed a net total of three players to drop down the leaderboard to bring his one-over score in line with the top 65 players and ties who make the cut at the $20 million event. He will wait te afternoon to see if he makes the weekend.
Woods has not played weekend golf since the Saturday of last year’s PGA Championship, when he made the cut at Southern Hills only to withdraw injured before the final round. He played the Open Championship at St. Andrews in July, but didn’t advance past the second round. The 47-year-old Woods was involved in a single-car accident in 2021 which severely injured his right leg, then took seven months off after the Open to heal from plantar fasciitis.
