Tiger Woods opened his season with a bogey-free round of 3-under 69 in the Farmers Insurance Open that left him five shots behind South Korean Kang Sung-hoon on Thursday.
If the setting was familiar for Woods, so was his middle-of-the-pack position after starting on the North Course. In four of his six wins at this tournaments, he has been at least five shots behind after the opening round.
“I’m happy with the way I played, absolutely,” Woods said. “I could have been a lot better if I took care of the par 5s a little bit more, but obviously, I didn’t do that.”
Photo: Reuters
Kang, a 24-year-old rookie, finished with back-to-back birdies on the North Course for an 8-under 64, giving him a one-shot lead over Alex Prugh and Rickie Fowler. Another rookie, Chris Kirk, was another shot back at 66.
Phil Mickelson shot 32 on the back nine for a 5-under 67 to match the best score on the tougher South Course, which hosted the 2008 US Open that Woods won in a playoff. Also at 67 on the South was John Daly, whose last win came in 2004 at this tournament.
Woods no longer is No. 1 — he has slipped to No. 3 in the world ranking — but he has not played the public course he has practically owned since that US Open in 2008.
He missed the next year because of knee surgery, and last year while in a Mississippi addiction clinic.
“Welcome back to Torrey,” was a popular phrase from the gallery throughout his round, in which Woods played solidly except on the greens. He made only two putts longer than 3 feet — a 10-foot par save on No. 8, and a 25-foot birdie putt on the par-3 sixth that bounced along until catching the right corner of the cup.
The North Course is not the pushover it has been in past years because of some new length, and not just in distance. Along with being some 90 yards longer, the rough was allowed to grow and is thicker than the grass found on the South Course.
“I didn’t know the North was as long as the South,” Ben Curtis said after a 70.
He knows better, but it felt that way if tee shots did not stay in the narrow, canted fairways.
Woods was in shorter grass on half of his 14 tee shots, although four of those misses came on the par 5s. He couldn’t get to the green in two, and didn’t make the birdie putts.
Even so, he looked more like the Woods who ended last year with a playoff loss at the Chevron World Challenge, not the guy who played so poorly for so much of the year that he didn’t win on the US PGA Tour for the first time in his career.
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