Tiger Woods stumbles home to a 76 in return at Torrey Pines

The gallery filled every inch of grass from tee to green on both sides of the first fairway on the South course when Woods teed off Thursday at the Farmers Insurance Open. The 14-time Major champion missed just five cuts in the first 13 years of his career.

The story, going into the tournament, was the return of Tiger Woods, who was playing in his first PGA tournament in 17 months.

JASON Day played in the spotlight but it was Marc Leishman and Cameron Percy who shone amongst the Australians on day one of the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines. Of course, this is also Woods fourth missed cut in his last seven events dating back to the end of 2015.

English golfer Justin Rose leads the tournament after shooting a remarkable 7 under 65 on the hard South Course, while Canadian Adam Hadwin is one back after his 66 on the North. Hadwin is coming off of a 59 last Saturday in his runner-up finish at the CareerBuilder in La Quinta. Hadwin shot 59 in the third round of last week’s CareerBuilder Challenge in Palm Springs, Calif., and ended up finishing runner-up to Hudson Swafford.

“When the situation gets like that, you start to see not only some of the good stuff happening, but some of the bad stuff happening”, Rose said. “It’ll probably enter my head at some point (in the final round), but to do that I’ve got a lot of golf to play”. I hit it better, I putted well again.

Coming off back-to-back birdies to reach 1-under par, Woods followed with three straight bogeys, and then a double bogey when he hooked his tee shot into a ravine. I hit it much better today which was nice.

Tiger has put himself in a position where he has to play a pretty strong round to make the cut after Friday.

Meanwhile, Auckland’s Ryan Fox is in a tie for 28th after two rounds of the latest event on the European PGA tour in Qatar.

His dad on Saturday recalled the day that 17-year-old Pat went up against a SoCal whiz kid by the name of Eldrick “Tiger” Woods on this same golf course, the two competing for first place in the prestigious Junior Worlds.

Woods is five strokes behind the cut line as second-round play begins, with 30 golfers tied for 47th at 1-under-par 71. Whether that was a mirage because I’d watched too much golf or a reality because Woods was finally clicking a little bit, I do not know. If Woods shoots 68 Friday on the North Course, Twitter and Facebook and all the snap judgments will swing back the other way and say that Woods has his game and his future is secure. I was doing the shuttles and picking balls and stealing balls.

“I’m trying to get ready for that first full week in April”, Woods said.

“Just have to take that with a grain of salt”, he said. On Thursday, he noted how long it took and how he wasn’t used to such a pace; the weather and course conditions, including the rough, were more things to get used to. It was on Phil Mickelson’s magazine interview in which Lefty said Woods was using “inferior equipment”.