Tiger Woods will be at the 2023 Genesis Invitational this weekend. With a 3-over-74 on Friday, Woods continued Thursday’s opening round of 2-under-69 to remain 1-over in the top 65. The 15-time major champion was on the projected cutting line for most of the afternoon, but as conditions tightened, the odds of Woods making the cut became safe.
“I didn’t putt well today, I blocked a lot of putts early and that’s probably the highest score I could have made today,” Woods said. “Probably I should have probably shot five or six better, easy. I just wasn’t making the putts early and in the middle of the round when I had those opportunities. And they weren’t very hard putts, I just hit bad putts and obviously had a very bad finish too.”
Woods started his round with two good birdie looks on holes #10-11. The 47-year-old hit his approach shots within 8ft on both holes and failed to convert either chance as a cold putter matched the chilly California temperatures early on.
Bogeys ensued on the following two holes when Woods fell on even par and just inside the projected cut line. Woods bounced back with a near-ace on the par-3 14th, but the real momentum came on the 15th when his par-putt hit the bottom of the cup from just under 10 feet.
Woods missed another birdie bid from 6 feet on the 16th, but scraped his way all the way back to 2 under with a tap-in birdie on the par-5 17th. The putter began to cooperate in the middle section of his back nine, but unfortunately for Woods, this was met with subpar approach play.
After hitting a straight six par, Woods hit his tee shot on the famous par 3 below the bunker in the middle of the green. After putting his second in the bunker, Woods converted a slippery 5-foot bogey putt to stay at 1 under in the red.
“I was actually trying to hit the ball – my putt – where JT [Justin Thomas] was, and the hill took it more than I thought it would, and ended up in a bunker,” Woods said. So realistically I had two bad calls in the wind on 6 and 9 and ended up costing myself two shots there.
Another bogey occurred on the par-4 8th to put Woods on even par and another on his last hole put him 1 over for the week. Late errors threatened his place in the field for the second half of this tournament, but as the difficulty of Riviera increased on Friday, Woods was finally able to carve out a start time for the weekend.