JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- Back in college, when his older teammates used to rip him mercilessly based on principle, Tiger Woods wore a thick pair of glasses that earned him a variety of nicknames, including Urkel, a geeky TV character from that era.
After a week of trying to negotiate the rolling, roiling greens at Liberty National, having four eyes sounds pretty darned good.
Confused and increasingly frustrated, Woods has been forced to seek a second opinion to climb back into contention at The Barclays, the first stop in the FedEx Cup playoffs at controversial Liberty National Golf Club.
With caddie Steve Williams providing a backup set of eyeballs to validate what Woods thought he was seeing, he finally wrestled a few balls into the cup and finished with a 4-under 67 on a wet, sloppy Saturday to move within five strokes of co-leaders Paul Goydos and Steve Marino entering the final round.
Keep in mind that when they drive their courtesy car around, Woods is such a control freak, he always insists on being behind the steering wheel. At Liberty, though, Williams has been elevated to co-pilot status on the greens.
Woods said he could not recall using Williams as often to reread putting surfaces. Like, maybe, ever.
"I don't think I have," Woods said. "Usually, I read greens on my own and feel very comfortable with my reads, but here, a lot of the putts are double-breaking putts.
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"I'll ask him, and with my speed, is it going to move or not? And in the middle of the putt, what do you see it doing and things like that. It's just so different here."
It took two days to figure out what was bugging Woods -- he blew off interview requests after the first and second rounds -- but on Saturday he came clean. The greens at the 3-year-old course, built on top of a toxic site that made Love Canal look as dangerous as a chlorinated pool, have been driving him quietly insane. And we do mean quiet, since he blew off interview requests after the first and second rounds.
Turns out, he was seething about what he was seeing.
"I don't think we've ever played greens with this much movement," he said. "They are just, as I said, they are just very different that way."
Different, as it has been pointed out many times this week by the Liberty National critics, is not necessarily a synonym for "good." Take the third green, a tiny, elevated putting surface with runoff areas on every side. If the course had been drier and faster this week, it would have been nigh on impossible to keep a ball on that green.
No. 3 looks like a potato chip that went through the dishwasher and then spent a few minutes in a microwave. Woods used the politically correct term "movement" several times, which is what he'll be doing as soon as Sunday play finishes -- getting the heck out of here.
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| The Liberty National greens have flummoxed Tiger Woods for much of the week. (AP) |
The New York Post on Saturday said he had spent the week "acting like a child whose parents forced him to go to summer camp against his will."
Then he reeled off three birdies in a row on the front nine to climb into a share of fifth place, and it was like the Statue of Liberty torch lit a fire under his rear. Woods made great par saves on Nos. 13 and 18 to stay within striking range and finished with easily his best round of the week. Just like that, Eldrick was downright reengaged.
It helped that he made a few putts from beyond kick-in range. Why was Woods so salty on the seaside course? The longest putt he made in the first round was a shade under seven feet. In the second round, he made one putt longer than 38 inches. His longest conversion of the week is from 17 feet, though he made four putts longer than 10 feet on Saturday.
It didn't hurt that the tour, anticipating bad weather, moved the tees up 355 yards on the 7,419-yard course. A day earlier, in wet slop, a couple of prominent players said Liberty was brutal enough to stage a major.
Maybe they meant on the LPGA.
"We played the ladies tees," Woods said.
The closer the better, especially since Woods, the FedEx points leader and the winner of the inaugural points trophy in 2007, is T53 in putting average this week.
Woods has won a tour-high five times this year and excluding his missed cut at the British Open, hasn't finished worse than ninth since March. He has won four of his past six starts and is riding a 1-1-2 streak.
In the shadow of the Big Apple, he will start the final round five shots behind veteran Paul Goydos and rising standout Steve Marino, who have two career wins between them. On that front, it could be clear sailing for Woods on the shore of the nation's most hectic seaport. The six players ahead of him have 10 career wins on the PGA Tour combined, and only Steve Stricker has a victory this season.
Woods has already come from behind to win on Sunday by erasing a five-shot margin at Bay Hill, four at the Memorial Tournament and three at the Bridgestone Invitational.
"I guess anything seven or less," Woods said of his possible final-round reach. "I've come from seven back, I think."
Whether there are enough birdies to be had on the Liberty putting surfaces, which are busier than a New York cab stand at 5 p.m., remains to be seen. There are so many salacious curves on the greens, they should have called it Libido National. It took the leaders in the final group 5 hours, 21 minutes to play, and with wet weather, lift-and-clean provisions and threesomes slowing things down, play could have been timed with a calendar, not a stopwatch.
It just added to the general angst of a difficult week on a course that Woods hasn't exactly embraced. After his round, the world No. 1 was asked about three-time major winner Padraig Harrington's assertion that the course was worthy of holding a major championship, and Woods could not suppress a smirk.
Or course, since that has hardly been the universal opinion, maybe Harrington has a Barclays endorsement deal pending or something.
"That's it," Woods agreed, quickly bolting for cover in the locker room before he got into trouble for popping off. "There you go."
