MILWAUKEE — They bill the PGA Championship as “Glory’s Last Shot.”
The way things have been going for Tiger Woods, it’s more likely “Gory’s Last Shot.”
It seems unlikely a player coming off the worst performance of his PGA Tour career would be a prominent story line going into the season’s last major, but that is the situation heading into the PGA Championship which gets under way Thursday at Whistling Straits.
Woods had a 77 Sunday at the Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone — a course where he hadn’t finished worse than fourth in 11 events — and tied for second-last place at 18-over-par 298, his highest 72-hole score ever on the PGA Tour.
Henrik Stenson picked a good week to finish last. Nobody’s talking about his performance.
Since contending in both the Masters and the U.S. Open — where he finished tied for fourth — Woods’ game has steadily regressed. Since his T4 at the U.S. Open, he has finished T46 at his AT&T National, T23 at the British Open and now T78 at the Bridgestone.
He hit the ball so fat on the par-3 seventh at Firestone, he came up 25 yards short of the green.
He almost hit more fans in regulation than greens.
He’s 119th on the FedEx points list and is in danger of not qualifying for the PGA Tour’s playoffs — the top 125 make it.
Depending on what happens with the Ryder Cup standings — which will be determined after this weekend’s play — this could be the last we see of Woods for a while. He is sitting 10th in the U.S. Ryder Cup qualification standings, about 200 points outside the automatic eight berths that will be awarded (two points are earned for each $1,000 in prize money won this week).
The top eight players will be determined this weekend and American captain Cory Pavin will announce his four captain’s picks Sept. 7 in New York City.
Pavin doesn’t want to have to waste a captain’s pick on the world’s No. 1, but the way Woods has been playing, both he and Pavin will have to decide if having Woods around would be a benefit to the team or simply too much of a distraction in Wales the first week of October.
“I wouldn’t help the team if I’m playing like this,” Woods said. “No one would help the team if they’re shooting 18 over par.”
But as he usually is when his game has taken a turn for the worst, Woods remains almost annoyingly optimistic.
“I think I can turn it around. We have a lot of time between now and then, which is good,” he said.
After his performance at Firestone, everybody will be interested to see if the turnaround starts this week (Woods finished tied for 24th at Whistling Straits at the PGA in 2004).
This PGA Championship closes out what can charitably be called an unsettled year for golf and the majors. Mickelson won the Masters and then Graeme McDowell and Louis Oosthuizen won the U.S. and British Opens respectively. The latter two are deserving champions, but there is always the opinion among golf fans and some corners of the media that if the majors aren’t won by major stars, it’s a bad year.
The professional golf landscape is heaving like the terrain at Whistling Straits this week with Woods’ once invincible persona now scattered in pieces and Phil Mickelson cringing every time he gets in a position to overtake Woods for the world No. 1 position.
Lee Westwood, ranked No. 3, isn’t even here this week as he nurses a calf muscle injury.
At least this week could prove interesting regardless of whose name is on the Wannamaker Trophy come Sunday night.
chris.stevenson@sunmedia.ca
