Tiger Woods put in a very workmanlike round of golf on Friday at the WGC-Mexico Championship at Club de Golf Chapultepec in Mexico City.
A relatively unspectacular, but solid round of 5-under par had accumulated as Woods teed it up on the par-4 9th hole, his last of the day. Having hit 11 of his first 13 fairways, Woods flared an iron off the tee, which caught the right fairway bunker.
With 135 yards to the flag, Tiger reached into his bag of tricks and pulled off a shot that could have been pulled from the year 2000 archives.
“The ball was sitting down just enough where I didn’t think I could clear that tree,” Tiger said after the round. “I also had 130 yards, but it’s hard to get it up when the ball’s sitting down like that, so I went back to try to cut it with an 8-iron and then I realized that’s going to come out too hot; it’s going to miss the slope.
“I ended up going back to the 9-iron and I realized, ‘Jeez, I’ve really got to slice this thing.’ So I opened up and gave it as much of a cut motion as I possibly could and it worked out.”
It worked out to the tune of 11 feet from the hole. Woods would miss the putt, but the 5-under par round was enough to move him into the top-10, six shots back of 36-hole leader Dustin Johnson.
Woods will play his third round alongside Charles Howell III and Tyrrell Hatton. They will tee off at 12:39 p.m. EST, three groups ahead of the final group that includes DJ, Matt Kuchar and Rory McIlroy.
