Latest Tiger video: ‘Return of the stinger’

NAPA, Calif. – The first thing Bud Cauley remembers after the accident is seeing the paramedics who had pulled him out of the back seat of the BMW. The car had veered off the road, hit a culvert and gone airborne before striking a tree, then three others. The BMW finally came to rest in a ditch. Cauley, who was one of four people in the car, was having trouble breathing because he had a collapsed lung. He also had a concussion, six broken ribs and a fracture in his left leg. “It was really scary, first waking up,â€� Cauley recalls. “Obviously, first in your mind is your quality life going forward. And then I thought about … golf and was I going to be able to play again and play the same way. All those things I worried about for a while.â€� At 1 p.m. PT on Thursday at Silverado Resort, Cauley will tee it up in the Safeway Open. It will mark his first start on the PGA TOUR since the accident on that Friday night in June in Dublin, Ohio. Cauley, who had just missed the cut at the Memorial Tournament, has spent the last four months regaining his strength as well as his swing. He’s anxious to test his game and grateful for the support he’s received along the way. “Being out at the course these past couple days in Napa and all the guys that have come up – players, caddies, rules officials, people from the TOUR, just saying they’re happy to see me back,â€� he says. “It’s been really great.â€� Cauley says he wouldn’t have come to California if he didn’t think he could  be competitive. He thinks his biggest challenge won’t be managing his game around the scenic North Course, though – it will be keeping his emotions in check.  “I’ve put in all the work at home to practice and get my game ready, and I have done everything I can (with) workouts, to get my body in shape,â€� he explains. “But I think a big thing for this week will be to manage my excitement and my nerves to go out there and kind of get back in the flow of it. Obviously having been four months since I teed it up is a long time for playing on TOUR.â€� And Cauley has been through a lot. Doctors inserted a tube to re-inflate the lung and another later to drain fluid from his chest that kept him in the hospital for several extra days. “I was awake for the first tube they put it, so that was not very much fun,â€� Cauley recalls. On the Sunday after the crash, Cauley also had surgery to attach titanium plates to four of the ribs to stabilize them. Those are a permanent addition – but luckily he didn’t set off any alarms as he went through airport security this week. “I was kinda worried about that when I flew out here,â€� Cauley says with a wry laugh. “But luckily, they didn’t stop me and I didn’t have to go through the whole spiel about why there were these things in my chest.â€� Turns out the broken bone in Cauley’s leg was the least of his worries. It was non-weight-bearing so it simply healed with rest. Once the fluid had drained, Cauley was able to leave the hospital. But he couldn’t fly so his parents came and took him to their home in Tennessee where he stayed for several weeks. Once he was well enough, his mother drove him to Florida. “I just sat in the back seat surrounded by pillows for the drive,â€� Cauley recalls. “And then once I got to their house they have a recliner in their living room, so I just put some more pillows in there, got a blanket and sat in the recliner.â€� At first, any kind of moment sent a searing pain into his chest. He had trouble sleeping and even taking a deep breath was problematic. “To watch some movies, if I ever laughed it hurt,â€� Cauley says “It was about as uncomfortable and as much pain as I’ve ever felt.â€� At first, the doctors couldn’t tell Cauley whether it would be a month, two months or three months before he healed enough to get back to playing golf. As it turned out, he hit his first ball, with a wedge, during the second week in August. Cauley took it slow, working his way through the bag, while listening to his body and taking days off when needed to heal. He consulted a doctor in south Florida and came up with a plan of attack. By early September Cauley’s golf game was starting to feel “familiarâ€� again. He put the pain in his rear-view mirror and was able to go about his business like he did before the accident. “Just to be able to go out there and work on my game and not be worried about it was kind of when I took a little bit of a breath was like … we’re going to be okay,â€� Cauley says. Good friends like Justin Thomas and Harold Varner checked in almost daily. And once Cauley started playing 18 holes regularly with buddies like Kevin Tway, Peter Uhlein, Rickie Fowler and Tom Lovelady, he knew he had turned the corner. Cauley still experiences occasional soreness in his chest and ribcage. He can manage the inflammation with ice, though, so he’s ready to go. “From where I was a couple of months ago to now is night day as far as how, how good it feels,â€� Cauley says. And it will feel even better on Thursday when Cauley gets his 2018-19 PGA TOUR season under way.

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Welcome to this week’s Stats Insider, where we’ll take a closer look at Marc Leishman’s win at the Farmers Insurance Open. Leishman moved to seventh in the FedExCup with his fifth career victory. 1. PRIME TIME: Golfers traditionally hit their prime in their 30s, and that’s definitely the case for the 36-year-old Leishman. The 2009 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year had one win in his first 206 starts. He has four in his last 70, a span that started with his win in the 2017 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Only five players have more wins on TOUR since 2017: Justin Thomas (11), Dustin Johnson (8), Brooks Koepka (6), Rory McIlroy (5) and Bryson DeChambeau (5). RELATED: Leishman finally tames Torrey Pines | Winner’s Bag 2. STRONG FINISH: Leishman started the final round in seventh place, four shots behind 54-hole leader Jon Rahm. Leishman got off to a hot start, making seven birdies in the first 13 holes. He birdied the first two and made the turn in 31 before adding birdies on 11 and 13. He made his only bogey on 17 but came back with a final-hole birdie that proved to be the difference. Leishman’s Sunday 65 matched the lowest final-round score by a winner at Torrey Pines since the course was renovated in 2001 to make it tougher for the 2008 U.S. Open. Rahm (2017) and Jose Maria Olazabal (2002) also shot that score in the final round of their wins. Rahm finished second to Leishman on Sunday. Leishman’s round also was three strokes lower than anyone else who started the final round in the top 10. 3. PUTTING PROWESS: Leishman led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting by more than two strokes. He gained +8.0 strokes on the greens in the three measured rounds (there is no ShotLink on Torrey Pines’ North Course). Rahm was second in Strokes Gained: Putting at +5.9. Leishman holed 10 putts from outside 10 feet in the three ShotLink-measured rounds. He was 7 for 10 (70%) from 10-20 feet. This was just the second time in his career that he led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting. He also did it in his runner-up finish at the 2018 AT&T Byron Nelson. Leishman gained more than half those strokes in the final round. He gained +4.8 strokes on the greens in the final round after making every putt he faced from 10-20 feet. He was 3 for 3 from 10-15 feet in the final round and also made his lone attempt from 15-20 feet. 4. NARROW ROAD: Leishman hit just three fairways in the final round. That ties the fewest recorded in the final round by a winner in the last 30 years. It’s been done five times in that span. Three of the five players on the list – Leishman, Geoff Ogilvy and Steve Elkington – are Australian. Leishman hit less than half his fairways for the week (27 of 56) to rank T58 in driving accuracy. Torrey Pines traditionally has some of the hardest fairways to hit, though. The field hit 54% of the fairways in this year’s Farmers Insurance Open, making Torrey Pines’ fairways the fourth-hardest to hit this season. They were the hardest to hit in each of the previous two seasons.  5. ROUGH STUFF: Because everyone is missing fairways at Torrey Pines, the ability to hit quality approach shots from the rough is a key skill. That’s why players like Jason Day and Tiger Woods have excelled at Torrey Pines. Having a good short game can help, as well. That’s another strength of Woods, Day and another multiple-time winner at Torrey Pines, Brandt Snedeker. Leishman finished fifth in Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green at Torrey Pines (+4.7 strokes), 14th in greens hit (52 of 72) and fourth in scrambling (75%, 15 for 20). He missed the fairway 23 times on a par-4 last week but was 2 under par on those holes. He missed 18 fairways on par-4s on the South Course, but played those 18 holes in even par.  There were 34 players who missed at least 20 fairways on par-4s at Torrey Pines. Only two of those players were under par on the par-4s where they missed the fairway: Leishman and Zack Sucher. Both were 2 under par.

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ORLANDO, Fla. – Birdies and eagles ignite the roars, but running off a stretch of bogey-free holes should be considered with more respect than a bowl of vanilla ice cream. They surely make PGA TOUR guys smile, which is why Tiger Woods was left in a sour mood early on his back nine in what would wind up being a 4-under 68 in Thursday’s first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. So crisp in hitting seven greens and turning at 3-under, Woods was near flawless for his first 11 holes, extending his stretch of bogey-free holes to 25, dating back to the final round of last week’s Valspar Championship. Then, an unexpected wild pitch. His tee shot at the difficult, dogleg left par-4 third drifted wide right and came to rest against netting. Unfortunately, while the netting seemed to offer Woods a break, it did not.  “If you looked at the poles, I was out,� Woods said. Meaning out-of-bounds, meaning a long, expletive-filled trip back to the tee. He made his first double-bogey since the 15th hole in the final round of the Honda Classic. But if double-bogeys can dampen the spirits, what is a sure-fire remedy is a pair of ensuing par-5s — which Woods took advantage of. Two shots got him to the back of the 567-yard fourth, two putts from 40 feet got him to 2 under, then at the 531-yard sixth that wraps around Lake Bay Hill — or whatever they call that massive body of water that once swallowed a few sleeve of John Daly golf balls — Woods took a gamble with a 35-yard wedge shot. “It was a hard shot,� he said of what was left of a lay-up that was pushed right and mandated a shot to a hole cut tight to a bunker. There was little green to work with.  “I took a chance to play a spinner and I pulled it off,� Woods said.  Then at the par-3 seventh — the hole got in the way of what was meant to be a 71-foot lag putt — just like that, the two shots squandered at the third were a distant memory. As satisfying as those birdies were, what cemented the smile on Woods’ face was the 11-foot par-save at the par-4 ninth, “because I don’t think anybody wants to end with a bogey.� The fact is, bogeys have not been part of Woods’ repertoire of late. If you are searching for ways to measure the improvements Woods has made in this latest comeback, consider this: He recorded eight bogeys in a second-round 76 last month at Riviera, but he has made eight bogeys in his last five rounds combined — and four came on demanding par-3s at the Innisbrook Resort last week.  For sure, Woods has found an impressive rhythm; he’s been par or better in seven consecutive rounds and since that choppy 76 at Riviera, he is 13 under for nine rounds on three watery and penal Florida golf courses — PGA National, Innisbrook and the Bay Hill Club & Lodge — and the swagger has returned. “I think it’s just playing tournament golf,� Woods said, who has played 15 PGA TOUR rounds in 2018 after having competed in just two last season. “I’ve been away from it for so long that when I first came back it was just a matter of getting my feel for tournament golf again.  “I think I have (found it). I feel like I’m not really thinking as much around the golf course. I can just see and feel it and go and that’s just because I’ve got my ‘feels’ back again.� If there was a key to his round, it wasn’t the three birdies in four holes after the sloppy double-bogey. Likely, it was back on his opening nine.  At the par-4 13th, Woods had to apologize to caddie Joe LaCava for pushing his approach 15 yards to the right of his intended line. Flirting with water, the ball stayed up. While it was a missed-green, the 17-foot putt from the fringe was center cut to get him to 2 under. He got one shot deeper into red numbers with a most fortunate break at the par-5 16th. “Where did that hit?� Woods asked, needing an explanation for a drive that will go into the books as a 348-yarder. It shouldn’t, of course, because the ball rattled through the trees right of the fairway, hit hard dirt, then rolled down a cart path till he had but a 156-yard shot in. “(It was) nice to see, just a great break.� Woods getting a break is just what the competition wants to hear. He is, of course, seemingly picking up where he left off at Bay Hill. Woods was 13-under in 2012 and again in 2013 when he won for the seventh and eighth times here, so despite missing each of the last four editions of this tournament he’s been under par in nine consecutive rounds here. No, Woods wasn’t in the lead on Thursday. Not with Jimmy Walker posting a 67, thanks to a hole-out eagle at the demanding 18th, but nobody was going to dispute that it felt like old times.

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