Tiger, Phil get momentum boost with low final rounds

NORTON, Mass. -- The fans believed. But Tiger Woods knew better.

The world No. 1 simply had too much ground to make up on a golf course that had been extremely generous all week. Nine shots, to be exact, when Woods teed off two hours in front of the leaders at the Deutsche Bank Championship.

So if Woods could shoot the 63 that he did on Monday, the six players ahead of him on the leaderboard when he finished surely had birdies coming, too.

"The whole idea was to try and shoot something in the low 60s and that would probably get me in the top 10," Woods said. "Certainly from where I was at, I couldn't win the tournament, even if I shot 60 or something like that.

"I was so far back, these guys (with) no wind, soft greens and pretty benign pins, they'll go low."

Woods and world No. 2 Phil Mickelson both left TPC Boston on a positive note, though, after posting their best scores of the week in the second event of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup.

For Mickelson, it was a 66 that actually was his lowest since he shot the same score in the second round of the World Golf Championships-CA Championship back in March. He closed with birdies on five of his last seven holes, including on the last three, to finish at 7 under.

"I'll gladly take that," Mickelson said of the closing 66. "I didn't get the ball in the hole the front nine, and then I putted the best I've putted -- I haven't made that many putts in months -- on the back nine. It was fun to see a couple of putts roll in, and I ended up making some birdies."

Woods' 63 tied for his lowest final round, which he has now shot six times, including at TPC Boston when he won in 2006. And it could have been lower, too, had Woods not been unable to get up-and-down from a greenside bunker at the par-3 11th or three-putted the 17th hole.

"But (it) still wouldn't have been good enough," Woods said. He'll head to the BMW Championship with momentum, though, particularly given that he has won four tournaments at the host venue, Cog Hill Golf & Country Club.

The 25 putts Woods used on Monday were his fewest of an otherwise frustrating week -- typified by the second round when he missed six times for birdie inside 15 feet. The FedExCup leader said he didn't do anything different in the final round, though.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing," Woods said. "I went out there and I did the same things. Yesterday I hit lip after lip, was hitting good putts. The last three days I hit about three or five lip-outs per day, and you just stick with the same things.

"I'm hitting good putts, okay, so hit good shots, same thing I've been doing, and maybe those putts will fall. All of a sudden, boom, they start falling, and here we go."

And then there was the sixth hole when Woods holed a 9-iron from 131 yards for eagle. He tied the course record of 30 for the first nine holes after two-putting the par-5 second and making three other birdie putts of 5, 4 and 4 feet.

"Overall, it was a pretty good day," Woods said. "(The course is) a lot easier. The wind yesterday was all over the place. It was hard to hit the ball pin high.

"Today was actually pretty interesting. I think we played 13 out of the 18 holes into the wind. For some reason we just kept getting into the wind gusts, and it was just one of those days. It's just not blowing hard enough, but when it does come up, or when it did come up, it was in our face. It was just one of those weird days."

Monday was "weird" in another way. Woods was wearing his patented final-round red, but he didn't realistically think he could find enough red numbers to have a chance to win. That didn't change his approach, though.

'You play. You play like you always do," Woods said. "You always go out there and you try and shoot the lowest round you possibly can. Whether you can win a tournament or not, it doesn't matter. You go out there and post a low number, as low as you've got for that day.

"It doesn't change, whether you've just made the cut or you're dew sweeping on the lost day. It doesn't matter. You post a low round and see what happens. You can feel good about it, you know?"

Mickelson could, too. He hit more greens and as many fairways and made more birdies on Monday that in any round this week. His back-nine birdie putts came from 36, 15, 13 and 34 feet, and he two-putted from 26 feet for the finale on the 18th hole.

"I didn't play my best, but I actually hit the ball very well this week," Mickelson said. "I didn't perform on the greens. But when I did, the last nine holes here, I ended up making a few putts and finished 5 under, so it was a fun way to finish the round."

Mickelson planned to head home to San Diego on Monday afternoon. He has committed to play in next week's BMW Championship but wants to see how his wife Amy, who is battling breast cancer, feels before he makes a final decision.

"It's just day to day,'" Mickelson said. "I don't want to be gone for two weeks, so I'm going to fly home tonight, and I'll see how things are. It's just hard being apart for an extended period of time. Five days here or there, things are going well. But it's still day to day, and it's just hard being apart."