Tiger Woods showed signs of resiliency on Sunday but just didn’t have the stamina to make another run.
After dazzling the crowd on Saturday and jumping 32 spots up the leaderboard, the 15-time major champion closed out his successful return to PGA Tour action with a disappointing 2-over 73 on Sunday in the final round of the 2023 Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club near Los Angeles. Woods, who has hosted the tournament since 2017, walked off the course at 1 under for the tournament, tied for 45th place.
Woods truly believed he could win, but simply teeing it up in a designated PGA Tour event, whose field featured 40 of the world’s top 50 players, was impressive enough. Not only did he play, Woods made the cut and competed on the weekend. He just ran out of gas on his way to the finish line.
The scene on 18 watching Tiger Woods’ final hole of the tournament. @thegenesisinv pic.twitter.com/IbTFaizHnk
— Golf on CBS
(@GolfonCBS) February 19, 2023
Woods began the final round with a birdie on his opening hole and proceeded to save a few pars before the wheels slowly started to fall off. From the fairway on No. 5 he missed the green short and left, chipped on and then missed his 4 footer for par. He added two more bogeys on Nos. 8 and 9 after both drives found fairway bunkers, leading to failed attempts to scramble for par.
A flubbed chip led to another bad bogey on No. 12, but Woods was able to bounce back this time with a 30 footer for birdie from the fringe on the following hole. After his fifth bogey of the round on the No. 15, Woods threw a dart to the par-3 16th green to respond yet again with birdie.
His ball speed, distance off the tee and accuracy percentages were all lower on Sunday than in the previous three rounds, proof of the toll that 72 holes of golf has taken on his still recovering body. But we’ve seen this before in previous comebacks. What we learned from Woods’ latest return to PGA Tour action was the 82-time winner still has the will to compete, and at 47 years old, after countless surgeries and operations, his game can still stack up with the best.
The only question is for how long?