Tiger Woods Leads the Zozo

Tiger Woods has a two-stroke lead at the Zozo Championship on the PGA Tour in Chiba, Japan. After two rounds, he has carded two 64s, each of which is six under par on the water-logged Narashino Country Club. Friday’s round was canceled due to an astounding twelve inches of rain. Current U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland is alone at second. Japan’s hope, Hideki Matsuyama, is tied at third.

Tiger Woods got off to a terrible start in this limited field event of about seventy players. He did so by bogeying his first three holes. So, it was really something for him to surge from that disaster to a tie for first after the first round.  Today, he captured five birdies on his back nine for another 64.

Tiger is trying to tie the legendary Sam Snead’s record of 82 wins on the PGA Tour, which is the all time best. Since the Tour was not as competitive when Snead played as it is today, it would be quite a feather in Woods’ cap if he could tie and later exceed Slammin’ Sam’s 82 victories.

Tiger is talking about how he’s got a better putting stroke right now. I didn’t know that when I watched him on TV Thursday in the first round. I kept saying to myself that Tiger’s putting stroke looks really different. He is pop-putting with a different rhythm.

Tiger’s golf swing on the long shots looks really good to me. I’ve been critical of his swing over the past several years. I blame it partly on him leaving his swing coach Butch Harmon and then being taught by Hank Haney. Sorry, Hank. Tiger should have done like Jack Nicklaus–just tried to preserve what he had. In Tiger’s early years on Tour, I thought he had the best golf swing I had ever seen by such a long hitter.

But here Tiger is at the top of heap again even though he has gone through so much adversity in past years, especially all of those orthopedic surgeries that were a result of injuries of the repetition of the golf swing. Tiger put too much stress on his body with the kind of swing he had. As a result, he paid for it. But I’m glad to see him recovering like this, winning the Master early this year. He looks to me like he could possibly surpass Sam’s record by more than I thought he could until recently. Catch Jack’s 18 majors? That’s quite a lift, especially by a guy with a bad back.