Woods pounces with 66
Most of the moving and shaking took place at the top of the Western Open’s leaderboard at Lemont, Ill.
Look a little further down, though, and there’s a guy who could produce the biggest shake-up of all.
Tiger Woods rebounded from the dismal first round that had him at the edge of the cut line, shooting a 5-under-par 66 Friday to put himself within range of the leaders.
“Hopefully they won’t run away from me,” Woods said after his morning round. “And I can go ahead and play a good round tomorrow and get myself back in it.”
Woods is still six strokes behind leader Chris Couch, who shot a 67 and is at 9-under 133 for the tournament. But he’s making up ground fast. Woods is tied for 17th after starting the day tied for 103rd.
Duffy Waldorf (65), Tim Herron (66) and Jim Furyk (70) are one stroke behind Couch.
Ben Curtis, who shared the first-round lead with Furyk and Todd Fischer, is two strokes off the lead after a 71. Fischer (72) is at 136 with Steve Flesch.
“It’s still a long tournament,” said Couch, who earned a spot here by winning the Nationwide Tour’s LaSalle Bank Open last month. “I’m trying not to think too far ahead. I’m going to take it shot by shot and keep trying to have some fun.”
“I played a little bit better today, but more importantly, I putted better,” Woods said. “The work I did last night certainly helped.”
Woods hit 11 of 18 greens, the same as he did Thursday. But he needed only 23 putts, six fewer than he took in the first round.
“I didn’t hit the ball that bad (Thursday), I just got nothing out of it on the greens,” he said. “I felt like I had my speed back today.”
The cut was 142. Among those missing it were John Daly (144), Mike Weir, former Western champ Steve Stricker (145) and Jeff Sluman (150).
Also, Kirk Triplett of Pullman missed the cut with a 152.
LPGA Tour
Annika Sorenstam made sure she hit her 30-foot birdie putt hard enough on the third extra hole.
“I said to myself, ‘I better get it to the hole this time,’ ” Sorenstam said. “I’d been short all day, all week really.”
Sorenstam judged the speed and break perfectly, holing the putt to beat Tina Barrett in 21 holes in the second round of the HSBC World Match Play Championship at Gladstone, N.J.
“I had a lot of putts on the edges again,” said Sorenstam, who also struggled with Hamilton Farm’s rain-softened greens in her opening win over Joanne Morley. “It wasn’t until that last putt that I really had one go in.”
Coming off a 23rd-place tie in the U.S. Women’s Open, Sorenstam overcame three two-hole deficits before taking her first lead with a conceded par on the par-3 17th. The Swedish star needed only to halve the par-4 18th to win, but bogeyed the hole – missing an 8-foot par try – to send the match back to No. 1.
“It was a tough match,” Sorenstam said. “Tina got off to a great start.”
While Sorenstam avoided an upset in her bid for her seventh victory in 10 events this year, second-seeded Cristie Kerr and No. 4 Paula Creamer were eliminated.
The top-seeded Sorenstam and No. 8 Candie Kung – both in the upper bracket – are the only players seeded 12 or higher to survive the first two rounds. In the lower bracket, No. 14 Wendy Ward, from Edwall, Wash., is the only player in the top 29 left.
Sorenstam advanced to face No. 48 Rachel Hetherington, a 5-and-4 winner over Mi Hyun Kim, in the third round this morning.
The quarterfinals will follow this afternoon and the semifinals and final are Sunday on the hilly course.
Champions Tour
Ron Streck, the first player to use a metal wood in competition on the PGA Tour, had a 9-under 62 and held a two-stroke lead over Craig Stadler in the opening round of the Commerce Bank Championship at East Meadow, N.Y.
The second-year senior didn’t have a bogey in his lowest round since he shot 62 four times in his 22 years on the PGA Tour.
Streck had five birdie putts of 3 feet or less, including 3-footers on 17 and 18 at the 6,989-yard Red Course at Eisenhower Park, a county public facility on Long Island.