Round 2 Highlights and Reaction to a Woods 68

   Round 2 is in the books in Albany, and Tiger Woods has dazzled fans again with another great performance. He opened his round with birdies on three of the first four holes, eagled the ninth, and while he may have limped home a bit on the inward nine, he still posted an impressive 68, one shot better than yesterday’s round. Despite this, he is still very much in striking position heading into the weekend, positioned just five shots back of the lead held by Charley Hoffman. Overall, today’s round built on his opening round yesterday, and he said he was very pleased with the result. However, there are still a couple that he needs to address if he is going to put himself in any position to win this weekend.

  The first thing that Tiger needs to address is his speed on the greens. Admittedly by the end of the afternoon, everybody in the field was struggling to get the speed down, as the greens had sped up at least a foot on the stimp meter. Tiger acknowledged this in a post-round interview, saying “I had a difficult time all day with my speed on the greens”. While it didn’t necessarily show on the front nine, it definitely seeped into his game a bit on the back nine, which was the reason for his struggles the second half of the day. In order to have a shot at victory, this needs to be resolved by the outward half of tomorrow’s round if Woods wants to have any chance of winning. Putting is the most important part of anyone’s game, and no matter how close you hit it, if you don’t have the speed down, you won’t be able to make putts and you certainly won’t be able to score.

   In order to bring home his sixth Hero World Challenge victory, Woods also needs to address something on the mental side of his game. Woods was able to execute effectively on the front nine, but when he started losing some of his tempo, he made a few mistakes. Poor lag puts on the 12th and 15th holes led to a disappointing bogey and par, respectively, and an overly aggressive drive on the 18th hole put him out of position and led to another bogey. As much as Tiger has phenomenal control over the ball physically, his course management is a bit rusty and he needs to know when to dial it back if he is going to bring home a victory this week.

   Aside from Woods, there were a few players who made substantial moves. Of course there was Charley Hoffman, who snatched the lead with a 63, the low round of the day. Fellow Texans Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed both made nice moves as well, and defending champion Hideki Matsuyama showed he’s not ready to say goodbye to the trophy just yet by shooting a 66 and jumping nine spots on the leaderboard to a tie for fifth. If Woods is going to secure a victory this week, he will need to leapfrog all of these surging players in order to bring home the victory in Albany.

Written by Paul Choma