Tiger Woods short of practice time after storms hit PGA Championship
By Keith Jackson
Last Updated: 08/08/18 12:14am
Tiger Woods will have some "homework" to do on the Bellerive Country Club course after his preparations for this week's PGA Championship were disrupted by bad weather.
Woods has never played competitively at Bellerive as the 2001 WGC-American Express Championship was cancelled in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, while he was recovering from knee surgery when Camilo Villegas won the BMW Championship at the St Louis venue.
The 42-year-old took Monday off to rest following a disappointing weekend at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and he played only five holes of practice at Bellerive on Tuesday before the players were forced back to the clubhouse by thunderstorms.
Woods will hope to make up for lost time as he completes his preparations on Wednesday, and he is looking forward to playing the first two rounds alongside Rory McIlroy and defending champion Justin Thomas as he makes his latest bid for a first major win since the 2008 US Open.
"I literally haven't step foot on this golf course since that week in 2001," said Woods, who won his fourth PGA title at Southern Hills 11 years ago. "I didn't get up here before the British Open, and yesterday I took the day off.
"So today we only got in five holes and didn't really get a chance to see a whole lot. I only remember a couple of the holes, but I didn't really remember the first five that I played today. And so I'll have to do some more homework tomorrow and get a good feel for what's going on for the rest of the week.
"It's just a matter of how much I'm going to get in tomorrow. I know that it's going to be pretty packed, and I think that all the guys are trying to get in as much practice they possibly can because today was negated a little bit and most of the guys who played last week took yesterday off.
"So there's going to be quite a few guys trying to get out there to play, and I'm going to be one of them. I'll try and get as many holes as I possibly can but also make sure that I'm ready for an early start on Thursday."
Woods is encouraged by his performance in The Open at Carnoustie last month, when he had the outright lead midway through the final round before mistakes at the 11th and 12th left him too much to do to catch eventual winner Francesco Molinari.
"Considering that I didn't do very well in the previous major championship, and I missed the cut, to go from missing the cut there to contending and at one point leading The Open on the back nine, it felt good - it felt very familiar," he added.
"Unfortunately, I made two mistakes there on 11 and 12 and it cost me a chance to win the championship. But I felt like I was in control of what I was doing, and that felt good. Unfortunately, I just didn't do it."
This week is the final qualifying event for the US Ryder Cup team, and Woods remains confident of forcing his way into Jim Furyk's side as one of the eight automatic qualifiers rather than having to rely on a captain's pick.
Asked, "would you pick Tiger Woods", he replied: "I think he's trying to get into the top eight! But we'll see. I've gone from zero to basically 20th in seven months. As I said last week, I'm trending. So that's all I'm going to say."