Tiger cards 4-over to finish U.S. Open at 13-over
Never feeling comfortable on the greens, Tiger Woods closed with a 4-over-par 74 on Sunday at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa., and tied for 32nd in the 113th U.S. Open Championship.
It was a frustrating week for Tiger, who finished with 127 putts, the second most he has recorded in a major.
“I struggled with the speed all week,” said a composed and disappointed Woods, who finished at 13-over 293, 12 shots behind winner Justin Rose of England.
Paired with Matt Bettencourt, Tiger started strong, making birdie at the par-4 first hole for the second consecutive day. But his round collapsed at the 525-yard, par-5 second hole, where he hit his drive out of bounds and wound up three-putting for a triple-bogey eight.
Woods followed with three straight pars, then bogeyed the par-4 seventh hole. He added pars at the eighth and ninth holes to make the turn in 4-over 40.
Tiger started well on the back nine, rolling in a 15-foot birdie putt at the 290-yard, par-4 10th hole. He gave himself good birdie opportunities at Nos. 11 and 12, but was unable to convert.
After making a bogey at the short par-3 13th, Woods drove into the right fairway bunker at the 452-yard, par-4 14th, blasted down the fairway, then made a nice up-and-down par save from 107 yards, holing a 12-foot putt.
Tiger delighted the gallery by pouring in a 40-foot, left-to-right birdie putt at the 422-yard, par-4 15th hole. But he dropped a stroke at the 423-yard, par-4 16th, where his second shot ran through the green, leaving a tough pitch from thick grass. Such shots are essentially a guessing game, and Woods came up eight feet short of the hole and missed the putt.
Tiger hit quality shots at the demanding final two holes. At the downhill 217-yard, par-3 17th, he hit a beautiful long iron into the center of the green and just missed from about 20 feet, the ball rimming around half of the cup and stopping directly behind it. The putt epitomized the kind of week it was for Woods.
At the 511-yard, par-4 18th, Tiger smashed a big drive and flushed a long iron from 236 yards to about 35 feet right of the hole. Again, he was left with a big-breaking, left-to-right putt, and he two-putted for a par.
Merion, which played host to the U.S. Open for only the fifth time — the last coming in 1981 — gave most players fits all week long. The rain-soaked rough was brutal, the fairways were tight and the contoured greens difficult to read.
“Yesterday, I did not play well,” said Woods, who shot 76 in the third round. “Today it was a little bit of a struggle out there in these conditions. There’s not a lot of low scores out there.”
A four-time winner on the PGA TOUR this year, Tiger said he will analyze his performance, regroup and get back to work.
“There’s always a lesson to be learned in every tournament whether you win or lose,” Tiger said. “I’ll look back at the things I did right and the things I did wrong. I did a lot of things right. Unfortunately, I did a few things wrong as well.”
