- FedExCup Points: 50,000
- Purse: $7.0 million
- Winning Share: $1,260,000
- Yards: 7,415
PGATOUR.com Interactive Producer
NORTON, Mass. -- It's safe to say that the dream pairing of Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh and Phil Mickelson at the Deutsche Bank Championship didn't exactly live up to the hype -- at least in the first round.
| INSIDE THE NUMBERS | |||||||||||||||||||||
| The difference between Tiger Woods on Friday and Tiger Woods on Saturday | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| • Tiger's card, click here |
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Thanks to the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, players are paired together according to their seed. With Woods dropping three spots because of his absence at The Barclays last week and with Steve Stricker, K.J. Choi and Rory Sabbatini taking over the top three spots, that set up No. 4 Woods, No. 5 Mickelson and No. 6 Singh all together for the first time in a TOUR event.
After a Friday that left much to be desired, the Woods (1-over 72), Singh (3-over 74) and Mickelson (1-under 70) everyone knows and loves showed up for Saturday's second round and in a big way, putting on a display of absolutely sensational golf. To put their play in perspective, consider this: their cumulative total after the first round was 3-over par; the second round was 19-under par.
"Vijay and I did not score well yesterday, and Phil just had one bad hole, but he played pretty good," Woods said after his 7-under 64 on Saturday, which put him right back into the hunt at a place where he's the defending champion. "But today, we all played well, which was nice. We all made some putts and got it going. You know, when you get in those groups when you all feed off one another, when you're all going low, all making birdies, those are the fun pairings to get involved in."
That couldn't have been truer for Woods on Saturday. After a relatively sluggish start with just two birdies over his first nine holes compared to Mickelson who had two birdies and an eagle over that stretch, Woods blitzed the front nine -- his back nine.
In a six-hole stretch starting at the second hole -- his 11th of the day -- Woods went 6-under par thanks to four birdies and an eagle. The eagle came at No. 4, a short par 4, where he drove the green and holed a putt from just over 30 feet. It was quite a change of pace from the first round when Woods made a double-bogey six.
On Friday he tried to drive the green with a three wood, but came up short, landing in the large bunker that fronts the left portion of the green. From there he needed three shots to get out of the sand before two-putting for the six.
"Hopefully you don't make too many doubles," said Woods when asked if he could remember the last time he had a four-shot swing on one hole. "That hole is yeah, you can drive it, you can get it up there close, but you have to position the ball right so at least you have the right angle in there, and I didn't do that yesterday, and consequently I kept compounding the problem."
"I think Tiger got a little upset there when I ended up getting on that streak because he started out with 6 under the next six holes," joked Mickelson. "That very well could have been what happened. It was fun. You know, Vijay played great and Tiger and myself played well. I'm hoping if we both play well tomorrow, we'll have a great chance to be paired together in the last group on Monday."
After the round, Woods conceded that his goal for Saturday was to shoot 3- or 4-under par. Instead, he was 7 under and in the thick of it for a run at his sixth win of the year.
"I knew that 3 or 4 under par would put me right back in the tournament," he said. "Now I'm back in the tournament. We'll see what the weather is tomorrow and find my score and hopefully go shoot it."
