Tiger closes with 66, finishes third at TPC Boston
Tiger Woods became the first player in PGA Tour history to surpass $100 million in career earnings Monday with a third-place finish in the Deutsche Bank Championship at the TPC Boston in Norton, Mass.
The 36-year-old Woods closed with a bogey-free, 5-under-par 66 and finished at 18-under 266, two strokes behind winner Rory McIlroy. It marked the first PGA Tour event since the 2009 BMW Championship that Tiger has posted four consecutive rounds in the 60s.
“The purse increase helps,” Woods said after collecting $544,000 at the Deutsche Bank Championship. “I won fewer tournaments than Sam Snead has, but obviously he was in a different era. It’s just that we happened to time it up right and happened to play well when the purses really had a nice spike up.”
Snead holds the PGA Tour’s all-time wins record with 82, but earned only $620,126. Woods is second in victories with 74, but has banked $100,350,700. To break it down further, Tiger has averaged $362,276.89 for each of his 277 career starts. In 38 of his wins, first prize has been at least $1 million.
Paired with Dustin Johnson on Monday in the second-to-last twosome, Tiger began the final round six strokes behind leader Louis Oosthuizen. Although he squandered some early opportunities, missing a 16-foot birdie putt on the short par-4 first hole and an eight-foot birdie try at the par-3 third, Woods hung tough.
Tiger did birdie the drivable, 304-yard, par-4 fourth, where he hit a 3-wood into the front-left bunker, blasted nine feet from the cup and sank the putt. After a par at No. 5, where he burned the edge of the hole from 27 feet, Woods birdied three of the next four holes.
At the 450-yard, par-4 sixth, he knocked his approach shot from 137 yards to within 10 feet and made the putt. At the 582-yard, par-5 seventh, he hit a great flop shot from heavy rough right of the green and almost holed out, leaving himself less than two feet.
With a large, vocal gallery rooting him on, Tiger missed the green at the par-3 eighth, but hit another nice chip 5 1/2 feet from the cup and saved par. Then, at the par-4 ninth, he piped a 3-wood down the fairway and punched his second shot from 171 yards 8 1/2 feet from the hole and polished off the putt to make the turn in 4-under 32.
On the back nine, Woods reeled off eight straight pars before two-putting the par-5 18th hole for a birdie from 23 feet. Not that he didn’t have birdie chances. Tiger missed a 13-footer at No. 12 and a six-footer at No. 17.
However, he also made two good saves, getting up and down for par at Nos. 11 and 13, and hit great lag putts from 71 feet at the 14th hole and 60 feet at the 16th hole.
For the round, Woods hit 72 percent of the greens and 79 percent of the fairways in regulation, and used 28 putts for the third time in four days. All told, he tied for second in greens in regulation at 79 percent and third in driving distance with an average of 313.6 yards.
“My game is starting to come around, and I’m very pleased with the way I rolled it,” Tiger said. “I hit so many good putts all week long.”
Woods made only one bogey over his last two rounds. Proceeds from the Deutsche Bank Championship went to the Tiger Woods Foundation and local Boston charities.
After two legs of the four-tournament FedExCup playoffs, Tiger ranks third in points. The top 70 players on the points list advance to Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., next week for the BMW Championship, where the top 30 players will punch their tickets to the final event at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Sept. 20-23.
Any player in the top five on the points list heading to East Lake who wins the tournament will automatically win the FedExCup and a $10 million bonus. Woods has done it twice before, in 2007 and 2009.
