The early Friday scoring average hovered around 1-under 71 at TPC Sawgrass for the 2018 Players Championship, and that's exactly what Tiger Woods shot in his second round. It also describes how the two-time champ has been over the first few days around this course: Average.

Woods' 1-under 143 total through 36 holes was barely enough to make the weekend after a few guys at 2 under faded late. Woods hung on with those at 1 under to finish T68 (top 70 and ties make it), but he'll have a pretty early tee time on Saturday morning.

Woods' day on Friday was very middling. He made two birdies, one bogey and 15 pars. His issues were the opposite of what they were on Thursday, which has epitomized his last three events. If it's not one thing, it's the other. On Thursday, Woods gained strokes everywhere except off the tee. On Friday, the only place he gained strokes was off the tee.

"I didn't quite swing it right today, and I didn't quite have the shape, ball flight," said Woods. "I didn't have much of what I wanted. With these greens as soft as they are, I didn't take advantage of the opportunities I had today to really shoot a good number."

That part is true. Woods lost strokes to the field on his approach shots and couldn't clean things up with his putter like we've seen him do in other events so far this year.

You could make the argument that Woods was actually a little bit worse on Friday than he was on Thursday despite notching a better score. The reason, of course, is because of scoring average. Woods' 72 was right at the scoring average on Thursday at the time he finished. But on Friday when he finished, his score was actually a little big higher than the field average.

  • Round 1 average: 72.0 | Tiger score: 72
  • Round 2 average: 70.8 | Tiger score: 71

Woods' big-name playing partner, Phil Mickelson, wasn't even average. Mickelson missed the cut for the fifth time in six years after shooting a 8-over 152 over the first two days. Despite making six birdies over his first 16 holes, Lefty's week was unwound by eight bogeys and four double bogeys. Still, he found time before he left to pump up his new long-sleeved look on the course. 

"I think nobody does kind of slightly overweight middle-aged guy better than me, and this says exactly who I am," he said. "I don't know what to say. I'm really happy with it."

The supernova group of Woods, Mickelson and Rickie Fowler disappointed on the course after an inordinate amount of hype coming into Round 1. Fowler joined Mickelson with a missed cut, and Woods had to sweat out the afternoon to get two more cracks at TPC Sawgrass on the weekend. The winner of this year's event is not going to come out of this group, and now you're hard-pressed to find anyone who's even going to contend.