Tiger Woods took off his shoes and socks on the par 4 No. 6 Thursday at the Honda Classic, a reminder of Jean Van de Velde’s infamous action on the 18th howl at Carnoustie in the 1999 British Open Championship.
Van de Velde eventually decided against taking the shot and lost in one of golf’s all-time collapses. There was hardly so much at stake for Woods. But it was entertaining.
Woods got in the water and blasted a 9-iron back to the fairway. With a wedge shot into the green, Woods hit it close and made the putt to save. He birdied No. 7 and ended up with an even-par 70 after spending a lot of the day over par. He is six shots behind first-round leader Camilo Villegas and five shots behind Branden Grace and Chris Stroud.
“How about that?” Woods said. “(The ball) was only half submerged, so I could play some kind of explosion shot and get it back in the fairway. I got in there and I wasn’t trying to advance it very far, just make sure I got it back in the fairway and give myself some kind of wedge shot in there, which I did, and I got it up and down.”
Woods discarded his socks and shoes, put on his rain pants and exploded the ball out. After wiping off his damp clothes, he hit his 80-yard shot to within eight feet. Making the putt helped save a round for him that he just did not get a lot out of.
“I was 1 over at the time, and if that ball is not playable from where it’s at, where I crossed [the hazard] was pretty far back and I would have had to have dropped. I couldn’t even get an angle in the first cut and had to drop in the primary and had to lay up and didn’t get that up and down … I’m looking at a 6, 3 over.
“All of a sudden I flip it, make par there and birdie the next. Could easily have been 3 and all of a sudden I’m even.”
“He would have had to drop pretty far back,” said Dustin Johnson, who played with Woods and whose 66 was a stroke back after the morning wave. “I don’t even know and he would have had to drop in the rough, too. So he probably couldn’t even have got it [his third shot after a penalty] to where he did.”
Said Woods: “That’s the thing, I hit the ball well today and on top of that, I hit good putts but unfortunately I didn’t get the feeling of this grain. It was either snagging or I would blow through it top side. I just didn’t quite have it just right. I hit so many putts right around the edge that just were not going in. Just stick with what I’m doing because it’s not very far off.”
