Tiger Woods birdied five holes in a six-hole stretch along the back nine of the Blue Monster on Thursday, shooting an 8-under 64 to take a one-shot lead over Phil Mickelson and four others after the first round of the Ford Championship at Doral.
In a balmy start to the Florida swing of the US PGA Tour's schedule, Woods reached the 603-yard 12th hole in two for his second of five birdies and picked up strokes on Nos. 14, 15 and 16 to sit one shot ahead of Colombia's Camila Villegas, Rich Beem, Ryan Palmer, Mark Wilson and Mickelson.
"This guy Tiger seems to play well every day, every week," Mickelson said. "I'm just trying to keep pace. I'm trying to maybe have another shot at dueling out with him on Sunday, and I'm glad that he's playing well. I've got to do my part and stay with him."
PHOTO: AP
The first round rekindled memories of last year, when Woods won a showdown with Mickelson, pulling ahead on a 30-foot birdie putt at No. 17 while Mickelson lipped out a birdie chip on the last hole.
On Thursday, 60 players broke 70 and 116 players were at par or better.
"The times I looked at the board, neither one of us were up there," Woods said. "We weren't leading. I knew 7 [under] was leading, so try to get up there somehow."
Woods got off to a hot start on a tropical afternoon Thursday with birdies on three of his first four holes, including a tee shot to within a foot on the 222-yard fourth hole. Mickelson, who stated on the back nine, made three straight birdies around the turn, and while his gallery was about one-fourth the size of those watching Woods, they were as passionate as ever.
There were throaty cheers when Mickelson made a 12-foot birdie on No. 5, and one man yelled, "Yeah! He's letting Tiger know that he's coming!"
At that point, Woods was only about 250 yards away as he walked down the 14th fairway. He hit wedge into 10 feet, the start of three straight birdies that shot him to the top of the leaderboard. His 64 was his best score in the first round on the US PGA Tour since a 63 in the 2003 Western Open, which he went on to win by five.
Villegas, one of several promising rookies, overcame a bogey-4 at No. 4 with an eagle on the 528-yard, par-5 eighth and birdied four straight holes until settling for a two-putt par from about 8 feet on the 18th. That put him at 65.
Beem also eagled No. 8 but bogeyed the par-4 16th before finishing with consecutive pars in his round.
And Palmer three times recorded consecutive birdies to stay within a stroke of the lead. Wilson was 7 under until a bogey at 17. He recovered with a birdie on the last hole.
With a mild breeze in the afternoon and soft conditions, conditions were ripe for low scores.
"If you shoot even par, you're going to get run over here," Woods said.
Steve Elkington has been playing Doral every year since 1988, and after a 67, he kept his optimism in check.
"This course always gives up low scores early in the week," he said. "It's nothing to get too excited about."
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier