Tiger finding consistency with swing at Memorial

by Robert Lusetich

For the third consecutive tournament, he'd been poised to win on Sunday but couldn't keep his ball in the short grass to give himself at least a chance.

Such is the fragility of the golf swing that soon everyone from Lee Trevino to Joe the Golfer was offering the 14-time major champion swing tips.

Everyone, it seems, was hitting the panic button except Woods himself.

"I'll fix it," he said after a disappointing final round 73 at TPC Sawgrass. "I've got plenty of time."

On Thursday in the first round of the Memorial — a tournament he's won three times, the last in 2001 — Woods presented the golf world with Exhibit A.

Using a driver with a higher loft and a slightly revamped swing, smoother and with a more natural flow, Woods put on his finest ball-striking exhibition since his comeback to shoot a breezy three-under par 69.

The quality of his ball-striking was such that 69 might have been the worst score he could've turned in.

The transformation was so complete that, as he stood on the 18th tee box, Woods was poised to achieve what he's only done five times as a professional and none in more than six years: hit every fairway in a competitive round.

Alas, he missed to the right, caught a fairway bunker and ultimately misread a short par putt, recording only his second bogey — the other was a three putt — of the round.

A small price to pay in the big picture, which doesn't get any bigger than it will at Bethpage in two weeks' time.

"I hit the ball well all day today," a content Woods said later.

"Everything felt pretty good. Overall, I felt like I controlled the ball well all day. Especially with the wind blowing like this, you have to hit it flush. I did that all day. I didn't miss any shots."

He wasn't exaggerating.

There wasn't even a remote sighting of the old "stuck" move — his arms and by extension clubhead trapped behind his body — which plagued Woods at Augusta, Charlotte and at Sawgrass.

"The swing is starting to come around," said Woods.

"I'm starting to feel good now. It's been a long time. I'm starting to get my power back ... I'm starting to reap the benefits of (knee reconstruction surgery)."

He said he did not specifically work on straightening his driver during his three weeks away from tournament golf but instead worked on fixing the overall swing. In truth, his irons haven't been as sharp this year as they've historically been.

"Something turned in the swing but it was, 'If I can do it with the irons, then I can do it with the driver,'" he said.

That said, scoring in golf is a far more palatable proposition from the short grass.

"I understand why Fred Funk plays every week now," joked Woods of one of the sport's most notoriously straight hitters.

"It's a little bit easier."

Although the statistics showed that he missed five greens, three of those came when the wind either dropped or intensified. Each of the iron shots was fired at the pin but finished either long or short.

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There's no legislating for the wind but if he were in the mood to be critical, it seemed that he lacked his trademark killer instinct around the greens.

After lipping out a short birdie putt on the third hole, Woods made a curling 20-foot left-to-right putt on the next, then unleashed two three woods on the par-5 fifth, which left him pin high in a collection area to the right of the green. But he hit a very poor chip and had to scramble for a simple par.

In all, he managed to birdie — a two-putt at that — only one of the par fives despite being close to the hole in two on all of them.

Woods, who has historically putted these greens as well as anyone, needed 29 putts on Thursday. In contrast, tournament leader Luke Donald, who shot a remarkable eight under par 64 — tying the opening-round record at Muirfield Village — took only 20 putts.

Not that he was complaining; he's tied for ninth and hitting fairways and greens. Life's good.

"I've seen it coming together for the last month or so," he said of his game. "It's just that unfortunately it's one of those things where I would do it sporadically. It just needs to be a little more consistent."