2017 Travelers Championship, Round 2: Leaderboard, tee times, TV schedule

Editor’s note: The Presidents Cup is not part of the official PGA TOUR Fantasy game. However, our experts from PGATOUR.COM made their predictions for the Presidents Cup which takes place this week at Quail Hollow.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. – Tiger Woods got off to a bad start but averted disaster. After making four bogeys in his first five holes Friday, the five-time Masters champion steadied himself to sign for a 74 and is nine off the lead, tied for 19th place going into the weekend. “Well, it was windy,” Woods said. “It was swirling. Balls were oscillating on the greens. We got a couple of bad gusts. I hit a couple of bad shots. I hit a decent shot at 4 that ended up down in a divot, and it was just like – there were so many things that were not going my way. “It was partly the conditions,” he added, “and partly me.” Woods, 46, is making his first official PGA TOUR start in a year and a half, since his career was slowed by a fifth back surgery and nearly ended by a single-car accident in Los Angeles. He said surgeons contemplated amputating his right leg, which is a constant source of pain. Although he has walked with a limp at Augusta National, he’s still here. He easily made the cut for the 22nd straight time, which is one shy of the record held by Fred Couples and Gary Player. “It was a good fight,” Woods said. “I got back in the ball game.” And with a fused back and a weakened right leg, no less. After stumbling out of the gate, he told his caddie, Joe LaCava, that the goal was to get back to even par for the round. Woods had a chance after hitting a series of more characteristic shots, none better than his approach to kick-in range at the par-4 10th hole. But he failed to get up and down at the 15th hole and missed another birdie attempt from roughly 12 feet at the 16th. Still, the way he looked at it, he was just four shots out of second place. He also noted his excitement for the forecast Saturday – cold, windy – which could shake up the leaderboard. “I haven’t played a lot of tournaments of late,” Woods said, “so it’s been a little bit rusty, but I’m starting to come around. I felt good about how I fought back today and got myself – I could have easily kicked myself out of the tournament today, but I kept myself in it.” Joaquin Niemann (74, 1 under total), who played with Woods for the first two days, was impressed. “I think today, he hit it way better than yesterday,” Niemann said. “He looked great – amazing tee shots, some amazing iron shots. On 10 today, he was amazing. So, yeah, he’s still got it.”

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Francesco Molinari dominated the Quicken Loans National with an impressive display of ballstriking. A final-round 62 gave him an eight-shot win that moved him to 42nd in the FedExCup standings. Molinari had a birdie putt from inside 20 feet on 55.6 percent of the holes (40 of 72). He hit the ball so well that he could have ranked 72nd (out of 74 players) in Strokes Gained: Putting and still won the event. Here’s a look at closer look at his impressive statistics from his victory. — Molinari’s eight-shot victory matched the largest winning margin on TOUR this season. It was the third win by six or more shots. Dustin Johnson owns the other two. Johnson won the 34-man Sentry Tournament of Champions by eight shots and the FedEx St. Jude Classic by six shots. He closed his St. Jude victory with a hole-out from 171 yards for eagle. — Molinari gained 20.5 strokes on the field last week, the 11th-best Strokes Gained: Total performance in the ShotLink era (since 2003). Strokes Gained: Total measures a player’s score against the field average. Molinari was 13 shots better than the field’s highest-ranked player, Rickie Fowler, who finished in 12th place. Only one player has outperformed Molinari in Strokes Gained: Total while gaining fewer strokes on the greens. Tiger Woods gained less than one stroke (0.95) on the greens when he won the 2006 World Golf Championships-American Express Championship by eight shots. — Molinari led the field in Strokes Gained: Approach and greens hit and was second in proximity to the hole. He hit a career-high 62 of 72 greens, including all 18 in the second round. His average proximity to the hole was 24 feet, 11 inches. There have been more than 13,000 rounds played on the PGA TOUR this season. A player has hit all 18 greens in just 37 of them. — Molinari also ranked fourth in driving accuracy last week, hitting 75 percent of the fairways (42 of 56) while averaging 304 yards off the tee. He missed six fairways in the third round and missed just eight in the other three rounds combined. — Eighty-four percent of Molinari’s Strokes Gained for the week were a result of his tee-to-green performance. He gained a career-best 4.33 strokes per round from tee-to-green last week. It also was the best tee-to-green performance by a winner this season. — Molinari’s 62 greens hit tied for fifth-best on TOUR this season. Three of the four better performances came at the AT&T Byron Nelson at Trinity Forest, a Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore design that is known for its wide fairways and oversized greens. The AT&T Byron Nelson’s champion, Aaron Wise, hit a season-high 66 greens that week.

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