Tiger Woods curled in a long birdie putt at 16 and opened his arm to the heavens — his only great moment in the first round of the Open Championship.
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Chris Kirk surged to the top of the Round 1 leaderboard with a 9-under 63 on Thursday. Low scores were not hard to find on the first day at Sea Island, with more than 70 players shooting 2 under or better. Who will grab control heading into the weekend at The RSM Classic? Round 2 tee times Round 2 leaderboard HOW TO WATCH/LISTEN Telecast: Golf Channel (1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET) Live Audio: PGA TOUR Radio (11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET) NOTABLE PAIRINGS Chris Kirk, Russell Knox, Padraig Harrington 9:50 a.m. ET off 10th tee (Seaside) Brian Harman, Hudson Swafford, Bubba Watson 11 a.m. ET off 1st tee (Seaside) Chris Stroud, Vaughn Taylor, Smylie Kaufman 11 a.m. ET off 10th tee (Seaside) Davis Love III, Zach Johnson, Webb Simpson 11:10 a.m. ET off 1st tee (Seaside) Patton Kizzire, Kevin Kisner, Mac Hughes 9:50 a.m. ET off 10th tee (Plantation) Brandt Snedeker, Matt Kuchar, Mark Wilson 10 a.m. ET off 10th tee (Plantation)
This week, the U.S. Open returns to Torrey Pines, site of one of golf’s most memorable major championship showdowns. The on-course heroics of Tiger Woods that week in 2008 are forever ingrained in the minds of golf fans worldwide. Perhaps the bigger surprise came from Rocco Mediate, an unlikely foil who took Woods to the absolute limit that week in California. Thirteen years later, the story is no less enthralling, no less remarkable, than it was in real time. RELATED: 21st Group | Schauffele witnessed Tiger’s famous putt in 2008 Untouchable Tiger In order to best paint the picture of this David and Goliath matchup, you have to fully appreciate how dominant Woods was at this point in his career. Tiger wasn’t just the No. 1 player in the world, he was the unquestioned relentless force in the sport for a decade running. After a runner-up finish at the 2008 Masters, Woods had an Official World Golf Ranking points average of 21.19. Phil Mickelson was second, at 9.62. This meant that there was a larger gap between Woods and Mickelson (11.57 average points) than Phil and the bottom of the Ranking. Woods entered the week having won five of his previous 13 major starts. In his professional career, he had played in 45 majors, winning 13 of them – an absurd 29% clip. From 1997 through the 2008 Masters, there were 111 players with 50 or more rounds in major championships. Woods, at 125 under par in that span, was 198 shots better in relation to par than any other player (Ernie Els, +73). In fact, Els and Phil Mickelson (+74) were the only players within 200 shots of Woods in relation to par during that span in majors. Despite his knee injury, Woods was playing some of the most dominant golf of his entire illustrious career. Entering the 2008 U.S. Open, Woods had played in 11 tournaments worldwide since August of the previous year. He won eight times, with three of his victories being by eight strokes or more. He didn’t finish worse than fifth and posted a scoring average of 67.6 in that span. During that run of eleven tournaments, the combined total of opponents in those fields was 1,227. Woods was beat by six of them. Now consider how dominant Woods had been at Torrey Pines. In 11 starts at the Farmers Insurance Open from 1998 through 2008, Woods had won six times and never finished worse than tied for tenth. Woods was a combined 158 under par at the event during that stretch, 85 strokes better than any other player in that span (Mickelson was second, at 73 under). Only two players were within 100 shots of Woods in relation to par at Torrey Pines in those eleven combined tournaments. Woods won all five tournaments he played at Torrey Pines from 2005-08. Definition of an Underdog Rocco Mediate was 158th in the Official World Golf Ranking the week of the 2008 U.S. Open. At 45 years old, he was more than six years removed from his previous PGA TOUR win, in April of 2002. Woods had won 33 times on TOUR – including each of the four major championships (six majors in all) – since Mediate’s last victory. Mediate had missed the cut at Torrey Pines earlier that year in his first start there in a decade, one of seven missed cuts in his first nine starts that season. To that point in his career, Woods had missed just four cuts as a professional on the PGA TOUR. It had been six years since Mediate finished a PGA TOUR season ranked inside the top 40 in scoring average. Mediate had, however, come off his best finish of the season, a tie for sixth at the Memorial Tournament. He ranked fifth in the field that week in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green and 11th in Strokes Gained: Approach, both high-water marks for his 2008 campaign to date. Mediate had found some previous success in the U.S. Open, finishing fourth in 2001 and tied for sixth in 2005. Statistical Profiles that Week Over the years, Torrey Pines has been kind to players who are a little wild off the tee. Over the last forty years, more PGA TOUR winners at the venue have ranked outside the top-50 that week in driving accuracy (15) than inside the top-10 (seven). Woods was part of that wilder group: at the 2008 U.S. Open, he hit just 54% of the fairways for the week, ranking tied for 56th in the field. Nobody would hit fewer fairways on their path to a U.S. Open victory until Bryson DeChambeau did in 2020 at Winged Foot (41.1%). Woods was rewarded, however, for hitting some more accurate tee shots on par-5s. On the twelve par five holes Woods played in regulation, he hit the fairway with his tee shot nine times. In turn, he led the tournament in par-5 scoring average, carding three eagles and four birdies on Nos. 9, 13 and 18. For the week, Mediate was outdriven by Woods on average by 37.5 yards. Still, he led the field in par four scoring average (4.0), par-4 birdie-or-better percentage (22.7%) and front-nine scoring (34.3). While the field scrambled at a clip of just 44.4% for the tournament, Mediate got up-and-down 61.5% of the time, the fifth-best rate of any player. His greenside magic helped him avoid the big number, as he made only one double bogey through 72 holes. The Playoff As Woods took a three-shot lead through 10 holes, it looked as if Mediate’s dream run had come to an end. But Rocco rallied, making three consecutive birdies on the back nine to take a one-stroke lead. In regulation, only two players had birdie streaks all week longer than what Mediate put together in that do-or-die situation against Woods. For the second day in a row, Tiger needed to birdie the 18th hole to force a playoff with Mediate. Of course, he did, and would win with par on the first hole of sudden death. The win was his 14th professional major, getting there more than three years younger than Jack Nicklaus was when he won his 14th, the 1975 PGA Championship. Woods remained perfect (14-for-14) when holding the 54-hole lead or co-lead in a major championship, a streak that ended at the following year’s PGA. Had Mediate won, he would have shattered the record for lowest world ranking by a U.S. Open champion, at 158th. To this day, that mark is held by Steve Jones, who was ranked 99th in the OWGR when he won in 1996. In the twelve U.S. Opens since, none have been decided by playoff, the longest streak without one in this championship’s history.
Most of us can appreciate the travails of Jordan Spieth at the moment. Trying to appreciate his game at its peak was something most of us mere mortals cannot fathom. Solid off the tee, crisp iron shots, and a short game that at times seemed to never miss. He took that game to a FedExCup title, 11 PGA TOUR wins and three majors in his early 20s. But his current efforts over the past few seasons, where one part of his game would be firing but another be off, is something more familiar to most amateur golfers for sure. On Friday at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Spieth found some needed rhythm off the tee and on approach at times, but his putter largely deserted him. He gained as many strokes on the field in his approach game that he had lost on Thursday but rounds of 74-69 will see him miss the weekend. It’s part of a larger slide for the now 26-year-old who is coming up on nearly three years since his last victory at the 2017 Open Championship. Since claiming the claret jug, his only top-five finish came at the 2018 Masters. Related: Leaderboard | Amy paying it forward Despite falling outside of the world top 50 for the first time since he first entered it in 2013 early this week, Spieth’s game is still miles above us weekend warriors. He’s still in another stratosphere and while words can sometimes be cheap and “it’s closeâ€� is one of the most used clichés in the sport, you really believe him when he says a turnaround is coming. “I drove the ball really well, just hit my irons poorly yesterday, which set me back. And then just historically, I’ve had a really hard time reading these greens and it just continued this week,â€� Spieth said after his round. As he signed his card, he had lost nearly three strokes to the field on the greens over the two rounds. “Felt like I put good strokes on it and then I would look up and I missed them by like a foot offline, which was very unusual for me,â€� he added. “But overall I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made off the tee. That was the best I’ve driven the ball in a couple years. So when that happens I know the rest of it’s kind of coming behind. Did a lot today to make it work and I hit 16 greens which is another really good sign.â€� Spieth worked his tail off over the off-season with coach Cameron McCormick to get his swing back to the heady days of 2015, but on Tuesday they made another adjustment. He strengthened his grip by some “five degreesâ€� and is working on getting his shaft flatter with a very closed clubface in his backswing. This makes his accuracy into the greens Friday perhaps even more impressive. But the flip side of that is there could be some more erratic golf as he tries to embed yet another change. “That’s something that takes 2-3 months to nail down,â€� Spieth told Golf Digest of the changes. “It’s an unusual feeling for me and it’s been difficult to trust, especially without having my grip in the perfect place. I miss a lot of left shots given the grip. My hands are pretty good and I’ll be able to figure it out in a couple of weeks, but I did it with the idea that we have a couple of months before the first major.â€� Next week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am provides a welcome happy hunting ground for the Texan to continue his efforts. He won the tournament in 2017 and has never missed the cut in seven starts, finishing inside the top 25 in six of them. “When the driver starts to come around… that’s normally last… so when that starts to come around, I’m not worried about the rest of the game. And I’m not worried about the putting either,â€� Spieth continued. “I’ve had bad putting weeks where I’ve walked away saying, I don’t know what’s going on in the stroke. But I hit my lines almost every single putt and just simply misread them all. And I know that that’s not the case historically for me on the three courses next week, so I’m looking forward to that.â€� While he remains upbeat looking forward, he was emotional on course at TPC Scottsdale, even more so than usual. Afterwards, he admitted he felt like he had let down a few of his friends who had flown out to watch the tournament. “(The frustration) was just will. I just really wanted it. I wanted to play the weekend. I had a bunch of buddies come in town. I wanted to kind of give them something to watch the next couple days,â€� he lamented. “So when I just couldn’t do the easy part for me, which is the putting, that’s what was so frustrating. It’s not like overall frustration. I’ve had plenty of that. I’m done with that. I’m on the rebound now.â€� Currently Spieth is not locked into the World Golf Championships – Mexico Championship on Feb. 20-23 but can still earn his way in over the next few weeks. If his ranking slides further, he could also find himself out of the World Golf Champions – Dell Match Play Championship on March 25-29.  “I don’t know where I’m at in the world ranking,â€� he said. “Don’t care, don’t look at it. I’m just trying to step up and win a golf tournament and let everything else take care of itself [but] you need to play all four rounds to win a tournament.â€�
