Tiger's missed putts keep FedExCup drama alive
By Mike McAllister, PGATOUR.COM Managing Editor
ATLANTA -- Much like the SubAir system that has sucked all the moisture from the previously saturated Bermudagrass greens, Tiger Woods was in position late Friday afternoon to suck all of the FedExCup drama out of the last 36 holes at East Lake.
It would have been so easy for him. All he had to do was sink an eagle putt of less than five feet. And sink a birdie putt of less than four feet. And avoid the rough on the final hole. If he does those three things, he saves three shots and goes into Saturday's third round of THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola with a commanding four-shot advantage.
Considering he's the FedExCup points leader and has, according to the PGA TOUR's points distribution matrix, 243 other ways (including ties) he could win the FedExCup without finishing first ... well, let's just say we would have forgiven the trophy engraver for wanting to get a jump on things.
But Woods missed the eagle putt. He missed the birdie putt. Two misses inside five feet. No one was more surprised than his playing partner, Padraig Harrington, who was looking at the leaderboard just before Woods' eagle opportunity at the par-5 15th and noticing that Woods leads the PGA TOUR in making putts from that range.
"Obviously, I didn't expect him to miss two in a row," Harrington said. "... I don't think he's missed two in a row all year."
And then Woods found the rough -- and found it again on his next shot, producing a bogey on his final hole that left him at 5 under for the tournament. As a result, the drama continues, with adjusted third-round tee times foreshadowing a day that might turn unpredictable, depending on the rain that's expected to sweep across Atlanta on Saturday afternoon.
About the only thing that is predictable is that Woods will once again be paired with Harrington, who's tied with Sean O'Hair at one shot back. It will be the ninth time this year they been paired together -- and it's the second time in two months they've been in the final pairing on the weekend.
That first time, in the final round of the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, didn't go so well for Harrington. He suffered a triple bogey on the 16th hole that day as Tiger went on to win.
But you get the feeling that if anybody can maintain contact with Woods this weekend, it will be the affable Irishman. Of Harrington's 14 rounds in this year's PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, 12 of them have been in the 60s. And not only is he the hottest golfer who's yet to win this year, he actually enjoys the circus atmosphere that comes with being paired with Woods.
"I like more people around," he said. "I like a bit of motion and noise. There's an ambient noise when you're out there ... It's harder when there's one person standing there doing his own sort of thing than when there's 10,000 people. You can't really see or hear or really pick up anything definable.
"I think it's easier, and Tiger is easy to play with."
Woods also finds it easy to play with Harrington, but one thing he's still trying to figure out are the ultradwarf Bermudagrass greens at East Lake. They were installed as part of a massive renovation after the 2007 TOUR Championship, and this is the first opportunity for Woods to putt on them (he missed last year's event due to his knee surgery).
Growing up in Southern California, Woods' formative years were spent on poa annua greens, found mainly on the West Coast because the grass can thrive in wet conditions. And bent-grass greens have never caused him much trouble. But he didn't see a Bermudagrass green until he was 13 at a tournament in Arkansas, and he never got substantial playing time on them as an amateur.
He joked Friday that one of the reasons he moved to Florida was to learn how to putt on Bermudagrass greens. Well, that and the lack of a state income tax.
"When you play on Bermudagrass, do you take the break out, take a chance of running it past the hole? Or do you try to play for the grain to snag it at the end?" Woods wondered. "It's just one of those things that just makes Bermudagrass very interesting to putt on."
When Woods says "interesting," he generally means difficult. And because he missed two putts inside five feet, things remain very interesting at East Lake.
Make no mistake, though -- Woods is still in charge. But the course may be just tough enough to keep the field bunched up. And if somebody other than Woods should win the tournament, then Tiger likely would still need a high finish to claim the FedExCup.
A one-shot Woods lead may still seem imposing, but it doesn't look nearly as insurmountable as a four-shot lead. Of course, if Woods fashions the kind of round that he produced the last time he played on Saturday -- a 62 at the BMW Championship that allowed him to cruise home to victory the next day -- then the FedExCup drama may well turn into an early coronation.
"I can't control Tiger from shooting a 62 tomorrow or whatever," said O'Hair.
OK, maybe there's one way.
"The only way for me to do it," O'Hair joked, "is to take a baseball bat to his knee."
And with that, we just have one response: Can someone put Steve Williams on alert?
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