Tiger Woods completed four rounds of golf without a medical setback this week at the Hero World Challenge, which, in his words, was a victory in and of itself. Tiger shot rounds of 73-65-70-76 that at one point or another in each of them, showed flashes of the Tiger of old, but also exposed some glaring rust.
Nothing better illustrated the stark difference between good Tiger and bad Tiger than his “birdies or better” and “double bogeys or worse” stat line.
Tiger made 24 birdies,that leads the field.He also made 6 doubles or worse this wk, in 313 events as a pro, he’s never had a worse event.
— brandel chamblee (@chambleebrandel) December 4, 2016
Some of those doubles can be chalked up to bad breaks and rust, but there is definitely something a little more there. However, it would be hard to say given where Woods was just a few months ago that there aren’t more positives than negatives to take away from his week in the Bahamas.
The fact remains that Woods beat just two players in the field despite his bundle of birdies, and he finished 14 shots behind Hideki Matsuyama, who captured his fourth win in his last five events. How and where Tiger goes from here remains to be seen, but there is cause for optimism that definitely hadn’t been there previously.
The complete tournament leaderboard can be found here.
Here are the final round highlights, courtesy of the PGA Tour.
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