Tiger Woods Shines at Bridgestone, Heads to PGA With Back-to-Back Wins

Perhaps I shouldn't have doubted CBS when they flashed this statistic early in Sunday's coverage:

Final Round Scoring Avg
Tiger Woods: 68.7 (1st on tour)
Padraig Harrington: 71.7 (150th)

And if you cut out all the mid-round drama, that's basically how it played out. Woods won for the 70th time on the PGA Tour (and the seventh time at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational). And for the first time all year Harrington showed glimpses of why he was so successful in 2008. So, Padraig, here's your silver lining: congrats on your first top-10 finish of the season.

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After winning the final two majors of '08, Harrington underwent a swing change over the winter and has looked lost since. So maybe he can take the first 69 holes of the Bridgestone with him to Hazeltine next week.

For now, though, Tiger Woods is the story. He started the final round three back of Harrington, went out in 30 (he was four-under through the first five holes), and hit 11 consecutive greens before reverting to his "I have no idea where this tee shot is going" ways on the back.

Up to the 16th hole, it looked like Harrington would win for the first time all year, and do it while fending off a surging Woods. But then, out of nowhere, Paddy morphed into a 25-handicapper, Tiger was Tiger, and that was that.

A brief recap: The final pair headed to the par-5 16th with Harrington leading Woods by a stroke. Both players missed the fairway off the tee. Woods laid up and faced 181 yards into a green fronted by water that players were having troubling hitting with wedge shots. Paddy's second found the rough, 162 yards from the pin.

Woods, defying logic and physics, hit an 8-iron to six inches (an 8-iron! From 181!) and Harrington found the deep rough behind the green. After skulling his fourth shot in the drink, and dropping his fifth shot in the fairway, Paddy eventually scribbled down a tournament-killing eight. And Tiger kicked in his birdie to go from one back to three up. Because, well, that's how God wanted it, obviously.


The final two holes were a formality -- Harrington looked stunned by his sudden change in fortune and Tiger looked like he had just awoken from a nap (basically the same blank stare you get anytime he's on the course) -- and Woods has now won back-to-back events. And for the fourth time this season, the world's No. 1 heads into a major following a victory and as the prohibitive favorite.

I have no idea what to expect at the PGA Championship -- Woods finished tied for sixth at the Masters and U.S. Open before missing the cut at the British Open -- but there's no reason to think he won't win.

Conventional wisdom says the biggest obstacle to major victory No. 15 is Tiger's driver, but Tom Lehman, former British Open champ and Ryder Cup captain, thinks Woods might have an advantage at the 7,600-yard set-up.

"It favors long hitters, for sure," Lehman told the Star Tribune's Sid Hartman. The thickest rough is right off the edge of the fairway, so if you hit it just a little off line you're in trouble. If you hit it a lot off line, generally, you might get away with a little bit more. So, some of the guys who are notoriously wild off the tee, but very long, guys like [Phil] Mickelson and Tiger [Woods], have an advantage."

Tiger's notoriously wild off the tee -- especially recently -- and very long. But even when he's been all over the property this year, he finds a way to shoot 70 when anybody else would be happy with a 75. That's the difference. Now the only question is whether he can do it during a major. I'm going to go with yes. Yes, he can.