Tiger Woods played a round of golf, and here's how he did

Jay Busbee
· Senior writer

Tiger Woods played a round of golf on Thursday. This is not remarkable, except in the context of the fact that as recently as six months ago, we had no idea if he’d ever play golf again. But now, he’s clearly not only playing golf again, he’s playing golf rather well. He teed it up at the Wells Fargo Championship Thursday, a tournament he won back in 2007, and, well … he completed 18 holes of golf.

Most golfers merit coverage if they shoot either a 63 or an 83. Anything in between … eh. But Woods? Friends, when we’re talking about, at worst, the second-greatest golfer in history and one of the landmark athletes in American history, well, we report on him, no matter what.

All due respect to Peter Malnati, Tyrrell Hatton, Johnson Wagner, Keith Mitchell, Kyle Stanley and Steve Rogers, but few outside the golf world know their names, and fewer still would be aware that five of them are leading the Wells Fargo after one day at four-under. (The sixth fought Thanos.)

Nobody captures the attention of the public quite like Tiger Woods. (AP)
Nobody captures the attention of the public quite like Tiger Woods. (AP)

Tiger Woods, on the other hand, passes the grandmother test — that is, even your grandmother knows who Woods is, and everyone wants to know what he shot today.

For the record: Woods shot even par. Not great, not terrible. Good enough for T37, four strokes behind the leaders. Even par: the vanilla ice cream of golf scores.

Woods had his chances, going out in 1-under. But he made too many small mistakes — following a near-eagle on 15 with a three-jack from inside 15 feet on 16, for instance, or following a 27-foot birdie putt on 8 with a bogey on the par-5 10th. Small mistakes are survivable on their own, but small mistakes become round-killers when they stack up.

And yet, we still watch Woods, because every so often, he’ll do something like this:

So, yes, regardless of how Woods performs — indeed, even when his performance is the very definition of average, as it was Thursday — it’s still news. Not great news, not terrible news, just news. And we’ll bring it to you all weekend. Your grandmother will want to know.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.

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