Woods at 1-under as third-round play suspended
Sometimes a weather delay can prove advantageous. Tiger Woods hopes that will be the case in the 94th PGA Championship at the stormy Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Resort in Kiawah Island, S.C.
Tied for the lead with Vijay Singh and Carl Pettersson at 4-under-par 140 to begin third-round play on Saturday, Woods bogeyed three of the first seven holes to slip to 1-under while playing with Singh in the final twosome.
Play was suspended at 4:42 p.m. ET due to inclement weather, with the duo set up to putt on the par-3 eighth green.
After more than an hour wait, tournament officials decided to suspend play for the day due to rain, thunder and lightning. Play will resume Sunday at 7:45 a.m., with Woods facing a six-foot par putt.
Final-round play is scheduled to begin at 11:44 a.m., with players going off in threesomes from the first and 10th tees.
It marked the first time since 2008 that the PGA Championship did not complete the third round on Saturday.
As it stands, Singh and Rory McIlroy — who completed nine holes Saturday — are tied for the lead at 6-under par. Tiger is tied for 11th at 1-under.
“I got off to a rough start today and couldn’t get anything going,” Woods said. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning and see what happens. There are a lot of holes left to be played.”
Woods will look to regroup on Sunday, when he’ll likely have to again try to win his first major championship coming from behind in the final round. All 14 of his major titles have come when he is leading or co-leading starting the last round.
After stringing together two wonderful days on the greens, Tiger’s putter cooled off Saturday. He used 22 putts on Thursday and 26 on Friday, but accumulated 12 through seven holes on Saturday.
A four-time winner of the PGA Championship, Woods pulled his opening drive into the left rough and drew a terrible lie, with the ball sitting down. However, he punched a beautiful low 9-iron that ran up to the left fringe of the green, pin-high and 10 feet from the cup. Tiger gave his birdie attempt a good run but just missed on the right.
Looking to birdie the 565-yard, par-5 second hole for the third consecutive day, Woods pounded a 298-yard drive and had 245 yards to the front of the green. He pulled a 5-wood into the left greenside bunker and was faced with a long shot to the back-right pin. Tiger came up 25 feet short of the hole with his sand shot, then hit a great putt that caught most of the cup, but the ball refused to drop.
Undaunted, Woods flushed an iron down the fairway at the 317-yard, par-4 third, leaving 98 yards to the hole. He clipped a gorgeous wedge four feet left of the hole and seemed certain of a birdie. But he pulled the putt and was furious with himself for the miss.
The frustration carried over to the 457-yard, par-4 fourth, where Tiger pulled his tee shot into the gallery and hit a spectator — Woods signed a glove for the fan. With 205 yards to the hole, Tiger took a mammoth swing on his second shot, his right leg coming off the ground, and hooked the ball into the crowd on the left, hitting another spectator.
After autographing another glove, Woods turned his attention to another poor lie in the spongy rough. Staring at a brutal uphill chip with little green to work with, Tiger left his third shot short of the putting surface, then chipped to four feet and made the putt to salvage bogey.
Woods’ mood didn’t improve at the 196-yard, par-3 fifth, where he pulled a 6-iron well left of the green, just above a bunker. This time Tiger caught a decent lie and hit a flop shot eight feet short of the cup — amazed the ball didn’t run further — but couldn’t convert the par save.
Woods steadied with a two-putt par from 25 feet at the 460-yard, par-4 sixth, but slipped again at the 583-yard, par-5 seventh, where he hit two poor shots to the right, sailed a wedge over the green into a sandy waste area, and was unable to save par, missing a 12-foot putt.
At the eighth hole, Tiger hit an 8-iron on the front-right portion of the green. But typical of how his luck was going, the ball was knocked down by the wind and rolled right down a steep bank, leaving another testy chip. Woods hit a nice bump-and-run shot into the hill and did well to get the ball within six feet of the cup. Before he had a chance to putt, a horn sounded, stopping play, with players, officials and more than 30,000 spectators evacuating the course.
Unlike Friday’s round, when winds gusted up to 30 mph and the average score was 78.2 – the highest in PGA Championship history – conditions were mostly calm Saturday until the storms arrived.
On Friday, 41 players failed to break 80.
