Friday 10 April 2015 21:32, UK
Tiger Woods is excited for the rest of his Masters challenge, despite being 12 strokes off the record pace being set by Jordan Spieth.
The former world No 1 arrived at Augusta with his game in the worst shape of his career, having failed to make a cut this year in only two tournament appearances.
But he started to show signs of the player who has 14 major championships to his name on Friday, when a second-round 69 cemented his place in the field for the weekend.
Woods opened with a birdie at the tough first, and then bounced back from a dropped shot at the sixth with birdies at the next two holes.
He was one of very few players to pick up a shot at the tricky 11th, but his round then stalled with eight pars as he missed out on the two par fives and had to scramble for pars on a couple of occasions.
But, speaking to Sky Sports, Woods was delighted with the progress his game is showing, and he hopes he can continue to climb the leaderboard over the weekend.
"I’m very excited. I’m 12 back right now but there’s not a lot of guys ahead of me," Woods said.
"We don’t know what the Committee is going to do (with the course). They can change it overnight if they want to. If they want to toughen it up, they can, or they can leave it like it is right now, let us be aggressive and make birdies.
"We’ll see what it is tomorrow. I’m going to be towards the end of the pack and I’ll get to see what some of the guys are doing early, whether or not they are firing at flags and making a bunch of birdies or not.
I was at a pretty low moment in my career and it's been fun to be able to dig it out of the trenches with Chris and Rob (Woods' coaches Como and Manning) - we spent hours and hours just drilling it out.
"It’s been solid. I played a little better today than I did yesterday, but I left myself with two impossible up and downs out there at six and 15. But I made some sweet par putts at 14 and 17."
Woods admitted life on the course had been tough for him this year, with his two appearances including a career- worst round of 82 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and a withdrawal at the Farmers Insurance Open, which turned out to be his last competitive outing before Augusta.
"I was at a pretty low moment in my career and it's been fun to be able to dig it out of the trenches with Chris and Rob (Woods' coaches Como and Manning) - we spent hours and hours just drilling it out," Woods added.
"To change an entire pattern is not easy to do. People who have done it can testify it’s not easy to do but one of the fortunate things is that it’s an old pattern, so my body was starting to remember certain things and once it started coming around it’s been good stuff."
