MIAMI – Tiger Woods walked off the 18th green late yesterday afternoon, signed his scorecard and then stood patiently for a commercial break to end so the Golf Channel could do its live interview with him after his 6-under-par second-round 66 vaulted him to a two-shot lead at the WGC CA World Championship at Doral’s Blue Monster.
Woods chit-chatted with Steve Sands, the interviewer, and when asked about returning to the top of the leaderboard, he sighed and said, “Yeah, it’s been awhile,” sounding as if his game has been in the toilet for the last several months or years.
Fact is, Woods had last been in the lead all of eight days ago, after the opening round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.
“Been awhile?” a print reporter standing nearby joked to Woods. “You were in the lead last Thursday.”
“Yeah,” Woods said with a smirk.
Such are the out-of-this stratosphere expectations Woods has set for himself, standards only comic book superheroes could possibly have for themselves.
Woods’ bogey-free round moved him to 7-under par, two shots clear of Rod Pampling and three shots ahead of seven players, including first-round leader Henrik Stenson, Charles Howell III, Thomas Bjorn, Ernie Els, Zach Johnson, Aaron Baddeley and Trevor Immelman. Woods owns a 26-6 record for winning tournaments at which he held the lead entering the weekend.
“It’s pretty amazing what he does when he gets in front,” Pampling said. “Just look at his past record, something like 85-percent [winning] by the time 36 holes comes around and he’s leading and he wins.
“We certainly don’t rule ourselves out,” Pampling went on. “Obviously, I don’t think he’s going to have the weekend he had at Bay Hill, but you know, maybe it’s something fresh in his mind that [when] someone gets near he may actually feel a little bit of pressure for once.”
Pampling, who’ll play in the final group with Woods today (teeing off at 1:50 p.m.) was referring to a rare weekend meltdown by Woods, who shot himself out of contention with a back-nine 43 on Sunday.
Woods, too, yesterday was coming off an irritating opening round during which he putted 32 times and deemed his work with the flat stick “pathetic” on Thursday.
Yesterday, he jump-started his round with a 10-foot par-saving putt on No. 9. He closed his round out with a 10-foot par-saver on 18 to preserve the two-shot lead.
“That putt on nine was the first one I’d made [all tournament] and it started something positive,” Woods said. “When I poured that one in I said, ‘That’s my stroke. Let’s keep this thing going.”
And so he did, finishing with 26 putts yesterday.
Woods, who said, “32 putts is ridiculous; it’s too many putts,” spent about 45 minutes practicing his putting after Thursday’s round trying to return the magic back to his wand.
“Stevie [Williams, Woods’ caddie] saw something he didn’t like and we fixed it,” Woods said. “I told him what I was feeling and he told me what he was seeing and we worked it out.”
The par putt on No. 9 spurred Woods to a string of momentum-gathering birdies on Nos. 10, 11 and 12 to push his way up the leaderboard, where he would stay thanks to the 10-footer on 18 after he left his tee shot behind a palm tree.
“I’m just happy to be up there,” Woods said of the lead. “It’s been awhile.”
We should all have to wait so long for success.