Tiger Bounces Back at Bay Hill

This is sure to rile up those folks who might accuse me of Tiger Woods fanboy fanaticism, but, well, I'll be honest: even though Lumpy Herron put together a swell, four-under round at Bay Hill this afternoon, I don't think readers are all that interested in the fact that he needed just 33 strokes a side to do it.

The bigger story is that Woods rebounded from a one-over front-nine to fire three-under on the back. That's good for 10th place, two shots off the lead. Despite the strong finish, Tiger struggled to find fairways and greens for most of the day, relying on his scrambling skills to only get around in 36 strokes going out, where most players might've made the turn at three- or four-over.

But that's the difference between the guy with 14 major victories and the rest of us. After his round, Woods, as usually, said a lot while offering little:

Golf Channel: Today, [you hit] less than half your fairways, less than half your greens, and you managed to get it under par. How did you do that?

Woods: Well, I just scored. I didn't get anything out of my rounds down there in Doral ... but I got the maximum out of the round today. I held it together with some good up-and-downs toward the end of the front nine, on the back nine I started hitting it better and made some putts...

GC: The rest of us ... might say that we have intermediate steps where we say, "hey, we're building toward a certain result." For you, how do you assess how you're playing ... three tournaments in?

Woods: Uh, win every tournament I play in.

GC: So how's that going?

Woods: I haven't done it so far.

For the record, Tiger hit six of 14 fairways, nine of 18 greens and had just 24 putts. And it's that last number that has everything to do with his current position on the leaderboard. Woods will tee off at 8:25 AM ET on Thursday, and hopes to take advantage of the calm conditions to "get some birdies early." Sounds familiar.