Ryder Cup hostilities broke out a week early at the Tour Championship on Friday, with Tiger Woods and world No. 1 Justin Rose sharing the halfway lead after a pulsating second round in Atlanta, Georgia.
American Woods and Englishman Rose, who are to face off on opposite sides next week in the two-yearly team event in Paris, at one point built a three-shot lead over their closest rivals in the 30-man field.
However, they both butchered the 16th hole and eventually signed for seven-under-par 133 and a two-stroke advantage over Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy at East Lake Golf Club.
Photo: AP
Woods took pride in shooting two-under 68 and earning his first halfway lead since the 2015 Wyndham Championship, despite not quite firing on all cylinders.
“I didn’t hit it very good overall today, didn’t quite have the sharpness I had yesterday and it was pretty evident,” Woods told reporters.
“This is a grinder’s golf course. You’ve got to keep hanging in there and make a lot of pars and I did that today... I ground out a round and shot something under par,” he said.
Rose was also pleased with his score, a 67, on a day when he was unable to replicate his first-round driving.
“It’s just hard to hit a ton of fairways,” Rose told Golf Channel. “Yesterday I hit a ton of fairways, and I felt like it was an easy course, but today was much more of a struggle.”
Woods, a 14-time major champion who has not won this year in an otherwise impressive comeback following spinal fusion surgery last year, delighted his overflowing gallery when he ran in consecutive birdies at the 14th and 15th holes.
However, he yanked his drive into punishing rough at the par-four 16th and could only advance his second shot into a bunker, where his ball plugged, forcing him to blast out sideways and leading to a double-bogey.
“The rough’s brutal,” Woods said. “Every ball sits right down the bottom. There are no good lies. You’ve just got to hit and hope.”
While Woods could win the tournament and still not necessarily claim the season-long FedEx Cup points race and the US$10 million bonus that goes with it, Rose’s fate is in his own hands.
He started the week second in the FedEx Cup standings behind Bryson DeChambeau, who appears to be out of contention after a 75 that left him tied for second-last.
“It’s all very well winning tournaments,” Rose said. “There’s just something extra about winning a season-long thing.”
“I was able to do that in Europe in ’07 and it gave me a tremendous amount of pride, but to do it against the best players in the world on this tour would be incredible,” he added.
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