Tiger Woods missed the cut at the PGA Championship by a whopping six strokes, failing to play the weekend in a major for the third time in his illustrious professional career.
Now, after finishing 10 over par, Woods won’t play in the season-ending Tour Championship at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club in September.
Perhaps Woods already was thinking ahead to a vacation after spending as much time in the sand as any tourist at Tybee Island. His round and comeback were undone by a driver as erratic as the stock market. He hit 12 of 28 fairways and almost twice as many fairway and greenside bunkers.
“I haven’t been able to do what I wanted,” Woods said. “I thought I could come in here the past couple of weeks and get it done somehow, and I need some work.”
Ranked No. 129 in the FedEx Cup standings before the PGA Championship, Woods needed at least a 14th-place finish to move into the top 125 and qualify for the first playoff event, according to PGA projections based upon Woods’ decision not to play in next week’s regular-season finale in Greensboro. Instead, he gets a “Cut” by his name, joining those accumulated at the British Open at Turnberry (2009) and the U.S. Open at Winged Foot (2006).
“Now I’ll have nothing to do but work on my game,” he said. “That’s going to be good.”
A top-10 finish — even a 15th win in a major — seemed reasonable Thursday after Woods opened with three birdies in the first five holes. Instead of following the plan after such a great start, Woods decided to “play by feel” and fell apart, finishing 7 over, his worst opening round in a major.
It didn’t get better Friday. Two bogeys on the front nine pushed him to 9 over. However, the fist-pumping magic returned with back-to-back birdies at Nos. 8 and 9 that moved him to 7 over, three shots away from making the cut.
The final collapse started at No. 11, a 466-yard par 4. His balky driver acted up again, sending his tee shot into a bunker on the left. His second shot found a bunker left of the green. His blast out rolled across the green, into a pond. He walked off with a double-bogey 6 and was back to 9 over.
The end came at No. 12, a 534-yard par 5 that the old Woods would have destroyed. Instead, it destroyed him. He hooked his drive and punched out. His approach swerved left into the trees like the green was the last place it wanted to be. He walked off with a double-bogey 7 that pushed him to 11 over.
“Is this rock bottom for Woods?” CBS analyst David Feherty asked as Woods rolled in a birdie putt on No. 15 to get back to 9 over. A bogey at 18 followed.
Todd Rhinehart, executive director for the Tour Championship, said they would love to have Woods in the field because of his rock-star status.
“People who don’t follow golf come to see him to see him,” Rhinehart said. “There are not too many athletes that cross those barriers.”
However, he said their ticket sales are already 10 percent ahead of last year’s at this date, which Woods didn’t play in. They’ve also surpassed their corporate sales and sponsorships figures with more than 40 days remaining until the 30-man tournament starts.
“We’re not dependent on one player,” Rhinehart said.
The combination of having the PGA Championship at Johns Creek and the play of the young golfers such as Rory McIlroy and Gary Woodland has helped their sales, according to Rhinehart.
“There are a lot of great players on the Tour that we may not have heard of last year because of Tiger’s success,” he said. “In his absence, a lot of these players have stepped up.”
Many questioned Woods’ inflated expectations after he said earlier this week that he wasn’t interested in moral victories. He wanted a “W. Do you want me to elaborate? A nice W.” Never mind that this would be his second tournament since a three-month layoff and he was playing one of the toughest courses that many of the players said they’ve ever seen. Woods said he was disappointed and frustrated afterward.
“I’ve missed two major championships, and missed the cut in the other one,” Woods said. “So I just need to go out and do my work.”
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