Generally speaking, Tiger Woods has some pretty good juju around Torrey Pines Golf Course.
The 15-time major champion has won there eight times as a professional, including his 2008 U.S. Open triumph over Rocco Mediate, which is sure to go down in history as one of his greatest performances ever.
Yet, on Sunday, it appeared as if the golf gods said he’d done enough at the San Diego municipal course — at least for the time being — as Woods was on the receiving end of one of the most bizarre and unlucky breaks that you’ll ever see on a golf course.
Having bogeyed his first hole on the South Course to start his final round, Woods piped a fairway wood down the middle of the 397-yard par-4, leaving himself just 140 yards into the green that featured a back-right pin location.
Woods clearly had the perfect club dialed up as he cut a wedge back towards the flag. The ball landed a few feet short of the pin, bounced once more and disappeared into the cup only to improbably, impossibly reemerge and spin to 11 inches from the hole.
⛳️ @TigerWoods nearly holed out from the fairway.
The ball went IN the hole … and came back out. ? pic.twitter.com/ikm21gLSju
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) January 26, 2020
After the brief euphoria of the would-be eagle, Woods’ tap-in birdie had the weird feeling of a par or birdie, and it seemed to be a harbinger for the rest of the round.
Woods managed a birdie on the par-5 6th hole to take his score to 8-under par for the week, but as eventual champion Marc Leishman and others were racing up the leaderboard, it was clear that Woods would need something miraculous to happen on the back nine.
It wasn’t meant to be as Woods opened the back-nine with a bogey on the 10th hole. He would birdie both par-5s on his way in to reach 9-under par and sneak into the top-10, six shots back of Leishman.
Tiger Woods' T-9 finish at Torrey Pines is his best to begin a calendar year since 2012, when he finished T-3 at Abu Dhabi.
— Justin Ray (@JustinRayGolf) January 27, 2020
Woods will now have two weeks off before returning in mind-February for the Genesis Invitational, a tournament he hosts and that benefits his TGR Foundation.
