Tiger Woods’s week at The Northern Trust never amounted to much, as his struggles with his putter prevented him from gaining any momentum.
He shot 71-71-68-70 to finish four under for the week, well behind the pack. His driving accuracy improved and his iron play was great, but he ranked second-to-last in Strokes Gained putting, losing nearly five strokes to the field.
“I’m just not seeing my [putting] lines,” said Woods, who has already changed putters once this year, on Saturday. “It’s just one of those things where I’m struggling seeing the lines. The pace has been OK, not great, but my feel is just a little bit off. Whether I’m seeing high lines or low lines, they are just not quite dialed in yet.”
Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee said there could be a reason for Woods’s struggling flatstick — Woods’s age, 42.
“One of the reasons sport is so cruel to middle-aged men is they begin to lose their eyesight,” Chamblee said. “Doesn’t matter how good your eyes were earlier in your life, you lose the ability to focus. And when you are extremely near-sighted to the extent that Tiger Woods was — and even though he had a touch-up — you still lose that ability to focus quite the way you did when you were younger. Tiger Woods talks a lot or has talked a lot about not being able to see the lines and not being able to get the feels. He’s had incredibly inconsistent putting this week.”
Woods’s putting didn’t get any better on Sunday — he had just 31 feet, 1 inch of made putts.
“You have good weeks and you have bad weeks,” Woods said on Sunday. “The greens, sometimes they look good to you. Sometimes they don’t. All of my good putts basically went in at [the PGA at] Bellerive, and the bad putts lipped out. This week the good putts lipped out and the bad ones didn’t have a chance. That’s the way it goes.”
You can watch the entire Golf Channel video below.
