Tiger Woods sets strong pace in US PGA

Tiger Woods is the greatest front-runner the game has known. So when he took the lead in the first round of the US PGA Championship, it was not surprising that the question on many lips was not whether he could win but by how many?
And when he set off on Friday afternoon for his second round with Padraig Harrington and Rich Beem, the world No 1 would have been pleased to note that none of the morning starters had managed to knock him off his perch at the top of the leaderboard.
In hot and blustery conditions, things had suddenly got a lot tougher. Among those to miss the cut were Colin Montgomerie and Darren Clarke, while Retief Goosen, the former US Open champion, Phil Mickelson, the world No 2, and Luke Donald were in danger of following them.
Among those lurking with intent, however, were Vijay Singh, twice a winner of this championship, who remained two strokes off the lead after a level-par round of 72, and England’s Ian Poulter, who had five birdies in his 70 to move to two under par.
In normal circumstances, to be three strokes behind and with Woods still to tee off would be regarded as too large a gap. But, with the wind having picked up, Poulter was right to feel confident that he would not be too far behind come the end of the day.
“It is going to be brutal,” he said. “I am very happy to be going back home, putting my feet up and watching it from my armchair.” With a bogey-free five-under-par 67 safely tucked away on the first day, Woods will have known that many in the field would have subconsciously conceded defeat.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think Tiger has a rival at the moment,” Sergio García had said earlier in the week, a telling statement from a player once tipped to challenge him for the highest honours.
Which is why it proved a good move for the championship — the fourth and final major of the year — that a revitalised Harrington had been drawn to play with him in the first two rounds. Only the Irishman, it seems, is totally at home in Woods’s company.
With three majors of his own, Harrington positively revels in the challenge of measuring himself against the best and he virtually matched him shot for shot, putt for putt, in the first round to finish only one stroke behind. The true test is whether he has the energy to stay with him for the long haul.
It is one of the misconceptions of the modern game that to “Tiger-proof” courses you need to lengthen them. On the contrary, you need to shorten them and tighten the fairways. And yet if ever a course was designed to play into Woods’s hands, it is Hazeltine National, proudly boasting this week that, at 7,674 yards, it is the longest in major championship history.
What a contrast to Turnberry last month, when Tom Watson held the sporting world enthralled for four days in his quest, at 59, to become the oldest winner of the Open Championship or, indeed, any of the majors.
It was not length that was called for that week, but guile and craft and Watson had them in spades. Woods has them, too, but who missed the cut? He did.
There are other long hitters in the field this week — among them Ross Fisher, of England, who briefly shared the lead after picking up six birdies in his first 16 holes only to drop shots at the last two — but Woods has suddenly found an advantage with generously wide and relatively soft fairways. If he has a weakness, it is a tendency to spray the ball off the tee, but that pressure seems to have been removed. And when he finds fairways, he is virtually unstoppable.
Since the Open, Woods has moved on to a plane of excellence that is barely believable. He has won his past two tournaments — but was pushed all the way by Harrington at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational last Sunday — and five out of 12 since he returned to the game in February after eight months out recovering from knee surgery.
He is all about major championships, however, and should he fail to win this one after establishing an early lead, he will regard the season as a disappointing one. If he wins, he will take his tally of majors to 15 and will move to within three of Jack Nicklaus’s record. At 33, time is on his side.
Source:The times