In his first start since the 2023 Masters, Tiger Woods shot 1-over 72 to open play at the 2024 Genesis Invitational. There were some great moments, some bad shots and one wild final hole at Riviera Country Club as Woods kicked off his 2024 campaign.
Tiger was eight back of the lead at the time he finished and right on the edge of the cut line. (The top 50 and those within 10 of the lead will play the weekend in this field of 70.) All in all, it was probably a slightly better performance than expected given the lengthy PGA Tour layoff Woods has endured.
Let's take a look at his round.
Round 1 at Riviera
Bit of an odd start for Woods, who got a flyer lie on the first and had to get up and down from way over the back of the green for birdie. It was a metaphor for his front nine, which was also up and down. Two more birdies (on both par 3s) were offset by a pair of bogeys on the second and third holes. Woods went out in 1-under 34.
It was more of the same bumpy play from Tiger on the back. He started with a bogey on the famous par-4 10th, birdied No. 11 with a putt from off the green, followed that with another bogey and then finished with a birdie-bogey close, which was emblematic of his day. After reaching the 590-yard par-5 17th hole in two, Woods two-putted from 50 feet and made a nice 6-footer for birdie to get it back to level par, where it looked like he might end up. That would have been a nice outcome. Instead, he found the hosel (!) from the middle of the 18th fairway and hit a shank into a tree.
No one is immune to the dreaded shank.
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) February 15, 2024
Not even Tiger Woods. pic.twitter.com/6qJQY1W5yU
From there, Woods nearly got up and down for par (which would have been truly preposterous), but he settled for a final bogey, his sixth of the day and certainly the most jarring of them all.
"My back was spasming the last couple holes and it was locking up," said Woods. "I came down and it didn't move and I presented hosel first and shanked it. It's been a while [since I've hit a shank]. Definitely been a while. Other than trying to hit flop shots and other kind of weird shots around the greens, not from the position I was at."
At the time his round finished, Woods was T56 on the leaderboard. This would be good enough to play the weekend as Tiger sits less than 10 strokes back of leader Patrick Cantlay (-7) despite being below the top 50 in the field. Still, he has some work to do on Friday if he wants to play all four rounds at Riviera like he did a year ago.
It will be interesting to see whether Woods completely corrects the right miss he found Thursday off the tee. Most came early in the round -- he missed 3 of 14 fairways in the right rough, which was a little worse than the median. He did seem to fix this by the time his round wrapped Thursday.
Stats of the day
1,481 -- Days it's been since Tiger logged a top 10 finish on the PGA Tour. That's over four years ago. Want to know how long it has been since he finished in the top 10 of an official PGA Tour event? It has not happened since the COVID-19 pandemic started in the United States.
+6 -- Tiger played the par 5s and par 3s in 5 under on Thursday but the par 4s at Riviera in a truly terrible 6 over. That's the sign of somebody whose play is more rusty and sloppy than he would like. It makes sense given the layoff but still must be a disappointment for Woods.
Photo of the day
It was strange to not see the Nike swoosh on Tiger for the first time in 27 years. Maybe not as strange as I thought it would be but still pretty odd nonetheless. I guess it helps make it less bizarre that we haven't seen much of Tiger at all over the past few years. I can't get on board with the new logo quite yet -- maybe at some point, but it feels like there was so much opportunity there to do something different and better with it.
Quote of the day
"It is impossible to prepare for [adrenaline]. I rely so much on experience and having done this a long time, but still, having the adrenaline dump in the system, ball goes further, speed goes up, just the yardages are a little bit different than they are at home. It's just different and that's just a part of playing competitive golf."
Woods spoke after his round about how bad his feel was on and around the greens. Following a nice up and down to start the day, he did struggle quite a bit, but a lot of that is because he was putting himself in terrible positions on the par 4s.
What's on deck?
Tiger tees off at 2:54 p.m. ET on Friday alongside Justin Thomas and Gary Woodland as he chases the cut line at his first tournament of 2024.
