(by Jim McCabe)
MOSEL, Wis. — Though your GPS would take you in a fairly direct route of roughly 800 miles to get to Greensboro, N.C., from this locale along the shores of Lake Michigan, Tiger Woods has a different itinerary. He’ll travel through southern Florida.
And even then he might not make it to next week’s Wyndham Championship.
“I’m just going to sit back and I’ll go through with my team, we’ll talk about it, what I need to do and see if that’s the right move or not. We’ll decide next couple days,” Woods said, when asked Saturday morning whether he would tee it up in the final regular-season tournament on the PGA Tour schedule.
Shortly after leaving Whistling Straits on Friday evening when play in the 97th PGA Championship was suspended because of dangerous weather, Woods committed to the Wyndham. But truth be told, he was only working within the confines of PGA Tour regulations in an effort to cover himself. Rules dictate that players have until 30 minutes after the completion of “Friday’s play” to commit to the next week’s tournament.
Woods’ thinking seemingly was this: Come back Saturday morning, catch a little magic, make the cut, have a strong weekend to move up from 187th in the FedEx Cup standings and give yourself a chance for a strong Wyndham to possibly make the playoffs.
So the commitment to the Greensboro tournament, one that Woods has never played, was made only as a precaution; had he not committed Friday night, he couldn’t have done so Saturday.
Alas, the likelihood of keeping a date with the Wyndham shrank exponentially Saturday when Woods returned to the course and missed the cut. His words didn’t bode well for the folks in Greensboro when he said, “I guess the PGA Tour season may be coming to a close, but I’ve still got plenty of golf to play around the world.”
He couched it, of course, by saying, “I’m … potentially missing out on the playoffs,” but as he left Whistling Straits Woods certainly knew what missing the cut meant: that he would likely have to win Wyndham to make the playoffs and that a solo second couldn’t guarantee a spot.
But more important to Woods, or so it appeared, was the chance to take a deep breath and offer a sigh of relief that his summer run of major-championship misery was over. That it ended at Whistling Straits in a fashion similar to his visits to Chambers Bay and the Old Course — uninspiring — was true, though Woods clung to a sliver of optimism.
“I hit it good enough to be where I needed to be,” he said of his 75-73 trips at Whistling Straits. “But I putted awful.”
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