What Tiger is doing is nothing short of incredible

Tiger Woods carded an opening-round even-par 70 at The Honda Classic. He trailed by three shots when he finished his round after a difficult and windy morning at PGA National. Rd. 1: Tiger Woods hole-by-hole No. 10 (par 4, 505 yards): Drive barely misses the right edge of the fairway and settled down in the first cut of rough. Second shot runs just over the green into the first cut of rough. Chipped to 1 foot, tapped in par putt. Score: Even par. No. 11 (par 4, 450 yards): Tee shot into right intermediate rough, but 151-yard approach settles to 19 feet, 6 inches. He drains the birdie putt. Score: 1-under par. No. 12 (par 4, 438 yards): Tee shot misses slight left this time, ball settling into the rough. Moves his second shot 190 yards up the fairway, and chips to three feet, five inches before making the putt to save par. Score: 1-under par. No. 13  (par 4, 388 yards): Hits 292-yard tee shot into the fairway, from where his 93-yard approach settles to five feet, three inches from the pin. He birdies again to get to -2, a solid and surprising start for a guy who missed the cut by a mile at the Genesis Open last week. Score: 2-under par. No. 14 (par 4, 465 yards): Woods belts a driver 316 yards into the left fairway, but his 161-yard approach misses the green to the right. He chips up to four feet, 10 inches and drains the par putt to remain -2. Score: 2-under par. No. 15 (par 3, 179 yards): With the tees moved up about 20 yards this morning, Tiger’s first shot goes 158 yards and settles 18 feet, six inches away from the pin. Routine two-putt par to remain at -2, among the leaders. Score: 2-under par. No. 16 (par 4, 434 yards): Throttles back a bit with the tee shot, a 267-yard shot that finds the left fairway. Alas, approach shot flies 171 yards and lands in left greenside bunker. Splashes out and watches ball roll eight feet, five inches past the pin, then misses right-to-left curling par try. Bogey drops him back to -1 and out of the lead. Score: 1-under par. No. 17 (par 3, 190 yards): With the tees back a bit today, hits 200-yard first shot straight at the stick but watches ball bound into the rough, just barely left of the fringe. He’s short-sided himself, but a deft chip leaves him just five inches left for the par save. Remains at -1. Score: 1-under par. No. 18 (par 5, 545 yards): The breeze is up, so it doesn’t seem like a go-for-it type of morning. Woods hits the driver and finds the fairway. From roughly 300 yards out, there will be no going for the green in two. Long iron lay-up also finds the fairway, but 98-yard pitch shot is way short, barely making it to the green and leaving him a 40-footer for birdie. Two-putt par means he’ll make the turn at 1-under. Very solid start. Score: 1-under par. No. 1 (par 4, 373 yards): Hits long iron 236 yards down the fairway, but bails out away from the water with his 136-yard approach shot, leaving himself a tough two-putt of 41 feet, five inches. Lag putt comes up just under four feet short, and with the wind whipping at his pant legs, Woods drains the par putt to stay at -1. Tough conditions out there. Score: 1-under par. No. 2 (par 4, 441 yards): Woods tugs iron off the tee, ball veering off into left intermediate rough. Still able to get enough on 159-yard approach shot, though, and watches ball stop 25 feet, two inches short of the pin. Birdie try also short, but easy two-putt pars are good in the breezy conditions. Score: 1-under par. No. 3 (par-5, 533 yards): Woods loses his driver right, his ball finding the fairway bunker, from which it will be impossible to reach the green in two. Extricates himself nicely, leaving himself 150-yard approach from the fairway into a stiff breeze. Attempts to play a knockdown shot but hooks his third into left greenside bunker. Fourth shot clears the sand but settles into rough short of green, leaving him 13 feet, nine inches from the pin for par. Bellied wedge comes up three and a half feet short for par, and he blasts his bogey putt five and a half feet past the pin. Makes that one for a double to go from -1 to +1. Score: 1-over par. Leaderboard update: Woods double-bogey 7 at the par-5 third hole sends him spiraling down the board to T24 (+1). FedExCup champ Justin Thomas is in the lead at -4 on a very windy day at PGA National. No. 4 (par 4, 392 yards): Hole is playing downwind today, and Woods strafes an iron 292 yards down the fairway. Hits sand wedge for 99-yard second shot and knocks it to six feet, six inches right of the flagstick. Trying to bounce back after messy double at the previous hole, he rolls in the bounce-back birdie to get back to even. Score: Even par. No. 5 (par 3, 208 yards): Tough hole with water left. Tee shot misses slightly right and short, but catches portion of the green, leaving himself 52 feet, nine inches away. Lags his first putt to four feet, four inches and makes the par to remain even. Tied for 12th at the moment, four off the lead. Score: Even par. No. 6 (par 4, 437 yards): At one of the toughest holes on the course, hits driver way right and laughs. From not a great lie in the right rough, 184 yards away, he aims at the water left and, planning a cut. Takes a wicked cut at the ball, which goes over the trees and winds up in the sand trap between the green and the water. Tremendous shot. Splashes out to within inches for an amazing tap-in par to remain even. Score: Even par. No. 7 (par 3, 232 yards): Woods loves the tee shot, which is straight at the stick, but as Justin Thomas before him learned it’s impossible to stop the ball downwind like this. Ball trundles into rough behind green, and Woods chips up to 3 feet, 10 inches and makes the putt for par. Remains even par, a very good score on a blustery day. Score: Even par. Leaderboard update: With Justin Thomas bogey in the group ahead of him, Woods at even par is just three off the pace. He’s also looking at a birdie putt of just under 14 feet at the par-4 eighth hole. No. 8 (par 4, 428 yards): Splits the fairway with a 3-wood, leaving a 167-yard approach shot that bounds up onto the green. Sizes up a birdie putt of 13 feet, nine inches, settles himself over the ball and tugs it just slightly, settling for a par to remain at even par with one hole remaining. Solid day so far, just three back in tough, blustery conditions that have gotten the better of many. Score: Even par.  No. 9 (par 4, 429 yards): Playing his last hole of the day dead into the wind, Tiger hits 3-wood off the tee 266 yards, the ball finishing just slightly right of the fairway, in the first cut. From 178 yards, approach is dead at the flagstick and comes up 20 feet, seven inches short. Woods gets set over the birdie try and charges the putt well past the hole. He’s still got a ticklish four-footer for par, which he makes, the ball curling all around the hole and dropping. He will sign for an even-par 70. With the best score of the morning wave just 67, by Daniel Berger, Morgan Hoffmann and Justin Thomas, and the field averaging some two and a half shots over par, a very encouraging start for Tiger Woods. Score: Even par.

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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – It was closer than many expected, this 101st PGA Championship at Bethpage Black, which at times resembled a very slow-moving trophy ceremony. Still, after weathering four straight back-nine bogeys and a charge by Dustin Johnson (69, 6 under total) that briefly cut the lead to one, Brooks Koepka stabilized and shot a final-round 74 to win by two. He’d done enough over the first three days, which he spent “absolutely destroying this placeâ€� (Xander Schauffele) and playing “ridiculous golfâ€� (Rob Labritz). And now he’s won four majors in 23 months. “Brooks is young; he might get to double figures,â€� three-time major winner Padraig Harrington said after missing the cut earlier this week. “It’s a numbers game. He’s young enough that he could do it. Why wouldn’t you talk about getting to 18? He’s cracking them out at a fair pace.â€� Koepka, 29, put the lie to his own prediction that the winning score would be around even or a bit better. But he may prove himself right in suggesting before the tournament that he could perhaps get to double digits in major wins. If he keeps this up, he could get there quickly. The question is whether he will. “Players drift in and out,â€� said Harrington, a six-time PGA TOUR winner who won his three majors, the 2007 Open Championship and ’08 Open Championship and PGA Championship, in just 13 months. “Pretty much if you watch everybody’s career, they get about 18 months where they truly peak. Whether they’re 100th in the world and they become 50th, or 50th and it becomes 20th, or 20th and it becomes 10, or 10 becomes 1, I don’t know.â€� Until his four back-nine bogeys Sunday, you could count Koepka’s missteps on one hand. He bogeyed the relatively easy first hole to start the final round while playing partner Harold Varner III birdied it to cut the margin to five, but even then there wasn’t much cause for concern. Related: Winner’s Bag | Bjerregaard aces No. 17 at Bethpage | Get to know Jazz Janewattananond Johnson shot a 3-under front nine to cut the margin to four, but Koepka hit his approach to 2 ½ feet and birdied the 10th, and it was back to five again. Then came a wild sequence, in swirling winds, as Johnson held steady and Koepka bogeyed holes 11-14. The lead was one. “DJ, DJ, DJ!â€� the rowdy Bethpage crowd chanted, awakened by the promise of a tight finish. Alas, Johnson missed from just under 9 feet and bogeyed 16, then bogeyed 17, too, to give Koepka the cushion he needed to play the last four holes in 1 over and become the first player since Tiger Woods in 2007 to successfully defend his PGA Championship title. Woods, whom Koepka beat head-to-head by 17 shots over the first two days, was also the last player to win four majors in a span of eight major starts – as Koepka has now done – in 2005 and ’06. But Woods, an 81-time PGA TOUR winner, including 15 majors, has been such an outlier, as Adam Scott reminded at Bethpage, “I think comparing anything to Tiger is a little unfair.â€� Nor is it helpful to compare Koepka to Jack Nicklaus, who won 18 majors of a span of 24 years, from the 1962 U.S. Open through the instant-classic ’86 Masters Tournament. Another outlier. Lee Trevino won four majors from the 1968 U.S. Open through the ’72 Open Championship, roughly four years. He won the ’74 and ’84 PGAs, too, for six majors over 16 years. More common, especially amongst today’s crop of talented, young players, is the trajectory of Johnny Miller, who won 16 times, including three majors, from the 1973 U.S. Open to the ’76 Open Championship. That was mostly it for him; Miller ended his career with two majors. Rory McIlroy (69, 1 over total) won 11 times worldwide, including four majors, from 2011 through 2014. Since then, however, he’s gone largely dormant at the biggest tournaments, the glaring exception being his victory at the recent PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass. “It’s awesome,â€� McIlroy said of Koepka’s current run. “It’s great to watch.â€� Most pros would sooner watch paint dry than another pro play golf on TV, but McIlroy admitted he was done so early he watched a lot of Koepka on TV this weekend. Because when a guy seems to be playing a different golf course than everyone else, it begs the question of how. Graeme McDowell (70, 5 over) did the same thing. “I just wanted to see just how these guys were dismantling this golf course,â€� McDowell said. “When he played 15 the way he played it (Saturday), that kind of summed the course up to me because when I missed 15 fairway, I’m physically incapable of getting to that green in two, and obviously it was a brute-force wedge or 9-iron he hit to 15 feet.â€� Bethpage, he added, favored those who could muscle the ball out of the rough. “That’s why I lift all those weights,â€� Koepka said with a shrug. With winning off the table, McIlroy talked about playing for pride, Phil Mickelson (76, 12 over) about working on his game. Matt Wallace (72, 2 under, T3) spoke of being on a quest for world ranking points. FedExCup leader Matt Kuchar (69, 1 over total) remained in pole position. Koepka’s seven-shot lead through 54 holes was the largest in PGA history. So was his seven-shot lead through 36 holes. He broke the course record with a 63 on Thursday.  Said Tony Finau, Koepka’s partner at the 2018 Ryder Cup in France, “This is not a golf course where in the practice rounds I would have told you anybody’s breaking any kind of record.â€� McDowell called the winner perhaps “the next real dominant player.â€� We have been here before, most recently with Jordan Spieth (71, 2 under, T3) when he won five times, including two majors and the FedExCup, in 2015. He got his third major at The Open Championship in the summer of ’17. But as with Miller, McIlroy and most others not named Nicklaus, Woods or Trevino, the pace proved unsustainable. That doesn’t mean Spieth won’t be back, and he showed some positive signs in posting a season-best T3 at Bethpage Black. McIlroy could have a second act. Same for Jason Day, who won seven times, including the 2015 PGA and 2016 PLAYERS Championship, in 17 starts. “I don’t think he faces too much challenge, to be honest, with the way he’s playing,â€� Day (72, 4 over total) said of Koepka, “but everything ultimately comes to an end.â€� Only three players have reached double digits in majors: Nicklaus (18), Woods (15) and Walter Hagen (11). Koepka, with four, is mowing them down quickly, on very hard courses. He knows he doesn’t have to be perfect, and when he’s not, he can bounce back. Mostly, he knows that if he plays his game, nothing else matters. He said he couldn’t remember any shots hit by Woods or Francesco Molinari after the first two rounds. He’s in his comfort zone. “Tiger used to say, ‘My B game is good enough to win,â€� Harrington said. “If you think your B game is good enough to win, your A game will turn up. If you think you need your A game, your B game will turn up. That’s just the way golf is.â€� Next up: the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Koepka will be the two-time defending champion there, just as he will be the two-time defending champion at the PGA at Harding Park next year. Whether it’s New York or California, one suspects that Brooks Koepka, king of the majors, won’t be all that worried about which game will turn up, or much of anything else. 

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Alejandro Canizares overcame a slow start to card a 2-under 70 on Friday and keep his one-stroke lead after the second round of the Austrian Open.

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