Tiger Woods’ 10 lowest rounds in major championship history

Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost, sometimes he merely proved a point. Tiger Woods has a history of going low no matter the course, but his lowest scores in the majors have spoken loudest. He shot a 63 that could have, should have, would have been one better at the 2007 PGA Championship, the ball falling partially into the hole before seeming to change its mind and lipping out. The round was instantly dubbed a 62 1/2; Woods shrugged and won the Wanamaker Trophy anyway. Other thunderously low scores in the majors have set up yet more victories. They’ve also made believers out of even hardened skeptics. Colin Montgomerie was one of the few who remained unconvinced that Woods was destined to win the 1997 Masters Tournament – until Montgomerie was paired with Woods in the third round, and Woods demolished him, 65-74. Montgomerie admitted he’d been wrong, no one else had a chance to win the next day, and, of course, Woods made history. Still other great rounds have left him just short of glory. And one of his 10 best, the day after a freak storm wiped out his chances of winning the 2002 Open and the Grand Slam, was for pride but little else. The list below looks at Woods’ 10 career rounds of 65 or lower in the majors, starting with the personal record he set at the site of this week’s PGA Championship. 1. 63, 2007 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP (2nd rd.) Southern Hills Country Club, Tulsa, Okla. End of round position: 1st (from T23) Finish: Won The hottest major on record – the thermometer hit 101 in the first two rounds – also was the site of one of Woods’ personal records. His 63 in the second round of the 2007 PGA Championship at Southern Hills remains his lowest round in a major. At the time, no one had gone lower in one of golf’s Grand Slam events. Ten years later, Branden Grace shot a third-round 62 at the 2017 Open Championship, but Woods was millimeters from beating him to it. He raised his putter as his 15-foot birdie putt on Southern Hills’ uphill 18th neared the hole, only to watch his ball ring the cup. “I knew if I made that putt on the last hole it would have been a nice little record to have,” Woods said. “A 62 1/2 is all right.” It was the day’s lowest round by three shots. The scorecard shows he made eight birdies and only one bogey; what it doesn’t show is that half his birdie putts came from 6 feet or less. He also sank an 8-footer, chipped in once and holed two 20-foot birdie putts. With the sweltering heat sending the ball soaring long distances, Woods only used driver on one of the holes he birdied, the 653-yard, par-5 fifth hole. He completely changed the narrative. An opening-round 71 led to questions about whether the Perry Maxwell design, with its tight, doglegged fairways, fit his game. Some called the course a “Tiger-tamer,” for Woods had done little of note in two previous appearances at Southern Hills. He finished T21 in the 30-man TOUR Championship in 1996 – his father, Earl, was hospitalized before the second round – and T12 in the 2001 U.S. Open, which marked an end to his run of four consecutive major triumphs. He was 12 over par for his nine competitive rounds at Southern Hills entering the second round of the 2007 PGA. He started that day T23, six back of surprise leader Graeme Storm and four back of John Daly. The second round, though, changed everything. Woods’ 63 gave him a two-shot lead over Oklahoma State alum Scott Verplank. Consecutive 69s on the weekend gave Woods a two-shot win over Woody Austin, while Ernie Els finished alone in third, three shots back. With the win, the 13th of his 15 major titles, Woods improved to 8-0 when holding the 36-hole lead in a major. 2. 64, 2018 PGA CHAMPIONSHIP (4th rd.) Bellerive Country Club, St. Louis, Missouri End of round position: 2nd (from T6) Finish: 2nd It felt like history in the making. On a sweltering Sunday in St. Louis, amongst a never-ending sea of spectators, Woods turned even the staunchest disbelievers into cheerleaders. A decade since his last major victory and after a series of back operations that left his career in question, the 2018 PGA was where Woods shot the lowest final round in a major in his historic career. Starting the final round four shots behind Brooks Koepka, Woods made eight final-round birdies and matched the low score of the day. Bellerive erupted into paroxysms of joy, the massive gallery roaring with delight at vintage Tiger. Woods shot 32 on the front despite not hitting a fairway, punctuating it with a 173-yard approach from the gallery to birdie No. 9 and send shockwaves around the course. Birdies at 12 and 13 created a crowd crush so dense that there were fears for fan safety. Woods was within a stroke before a bogey at 14, coupled with Koepka’s birdies at 15 and 16, led to Koepka’s third major victory. He now had a Wanamaker Trophy to go with his two U.S. Open triumphs. Six weeks later, Woods won the TOUR Championship for his first victory in five years, and not long after that he would win his next major start, at the 2019 Masters. 3. 64, 1997 OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP (3rd rd.) Royal Troon G.C., Troon, Scotland End of round position: T8 (from T49) Finish: T24 Woods came into his first Open as a professional with no shortage of buzz after his game-changing Masters win four months earlier. The U.K. tabloids embraced the Tiger frenzy with headlines like, “Claws Celebre,” but with Woods already making some swing changes – coach Butch Harmon followed his every shot of the Wednesday practice round – it was an open question how he might do. Sure enough, with his swing a work in progress, he was more mistake-prone than usual. He seemingly doomed his chances with a triple bogey on the way to a first-round 72, and a quadruple bogey, including a whiff with a sand wedge, en route to a second-round 74. He made the cut with just a shot to spare. The greats, though, can never be counted out, and Woods dazzled with a third-round 64, which tied Greg Norman’s course record and vaulted Woods from T49 to inside the top 10. At the par-5 16th, he hit driver off the deck to 15 feet to set up an eagle. By the end of the round, after a chip-in at the par-3 17th, Woods had taken just 24 putts – including just 10 on the back nine – and sprinkled in seven birdies against two bogeys. He would go into the last round with an outside shot, eight behind Jesper Parnevik. Asked if he could win, Woods said, “I believe I still can.” Alas, he shot a final-round 74, with another triple bogey, this time at the famed Postage Stamp par-3 8th hole, to finish T24. 4. 65, 2006 PGA Championship (3rd rd.) Medinah CC (No. 3), Chicago, Ill. End of round position: T1 (from T5) Finish: Won After his Open Championship victory at Royal Liverpool one month prior, memorably hitting just one driver all week, Woods returned to the site of his 1999 PGA Championship duel against Sergio Garcia (Woods won by one) in search of back-to-back major titles for the first time since 2002. Woods started steady with rounds of 69-68, one stroke back of four co-leaders into the weekend. The 30-year-old turned on the jets in Saturday’s third-round, shooting 7-under 65; he played the par-3s in 3 under, made four birdies in a five-hole stretch on the back nine, and moved into a co-lead with Luke Donald at 14 under. Playing alongside childhood friend Chris Riley, Woods tied the course record that was set by Mike Weir earlier that day. He proceeded to pull away from the field in Sunday’s final round, carding 4-under 68 for an 18-under total and five-stroke win over Shaun Micheel. It marked Woods’ 12th major title. 5. 65, 2006 OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP (2nd rd.) The Royal Liverpool Golf Club, Hoylake, England End of round position: 1st (from T2) Finish: Won In his first Open Championship since the loss of his father Earl, Woods produced an emotional victory for the ages at Royal Liverpool. His 7-under 65 in the second round, which included a hole-out eagle with a 4-iron, sent him from one behind Graeme McDowell to one in front of Ernie Els. Woods retained that lead through 54 holes (with Sergio Garcia and Chris DiMarco joining Els a shot back) before beating DiMarco by two, a win that brought Woods to tears in the arms of his caddie, Steve Williams. The win was also known for Woods’ clinical dissection of the dusty links, which were dried-out amid a heatwave. He left driver in the bag to avoid the pot bunkers, leaving himself longer clubs into the greens. His Friday 65 included an incredible 50-foot birdie on No. 8, but that putt from another zip code wasn’t even the highlight of the day. That came on the extremely difficult dogleg par-4 14th. Woods once again gave up distance for safety off the tee, leaving himself 200 yards to the green. But he hit a perfect 4-iron that bounced three times before disappearing into the cup for eagle. He never looked back. “Usually, it’s just a case of getting a 4 and getting out of there,” Woods said at the time. “I couldn’t see the flag and was just trying to get the ball on the green, but I hit it flush and it went in.” That 65 remains a record at Royal Liverpool in The Open, a mark he now shares with eight others. 6. 65, 2005 MASTERS (3rd rd.) Augusta National G.C., Augusta, Georgia End of round position: 1st (from 3rd) Finish: Won Woods was still retooling his swing under Hank Haney when he arrived at the Masters in 2005; his winless streak in the majors neared three years. His first round here didn’t begin well, either, as he putted a ball into Rae’s Creek at the par-5 13th en route to a 74. It would be the highest opening round of any of his major triumphs. Everything changed Saturday, when, thanks to weather delays, Woods played his second round, a 6-under 66 that got him back in the mix. He also played nine holes of his third round before darkness halted play again, making five birdies to cut Chris DiMarco’s lead from six to four shots. All told, Woods played 27 holes that day, making 12 birdies against just one three-putt bogey. After closing the first nine with three consecutive birdies, Woods split the 10th fairway before the horn blew. “Chris could have easily gone off and run away with this tournament,” he said. “At least now I’ve got a fighting chance.” He completed the round Sunday morning, making birdies on Nos. 10-13 to run his string of consecutive birdies to seven, tying a tournament record set by Steve Pate in 1999 (he also birdied Nos. 7-13). Woods’ third-round 65 gave him the lead by three going into the final round. That round was a doozy. Woods chipped in at the par-3 16th hole, one of the most replayed shots of all time, and rolled in a 15-footer for birdie on the first playoff hole to beat DiMarco for his ninth major title. 7. 65, 2002 OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP (4th rd.) Muirfield, Muirfield, Scotland End of round position: T28 (from T67) Finish: T28 Most of Woods’ best rounds in the majors have either led to victory of left him oh, so close. Not this one. Although his 6-under 65 (one eagle, five birdies, one bogey) in the final round matched the low round of the week, all it did was move Woods from T67 to T28. Hardly anything to write home about. No, there were two main stories this week, neither of them pertaining to Tiger’s 65. The first big story was his shot at the calendar year Grand Slam, with Woods having come into the Open having won the Masters and U.S. Open. That made him the first player to successfully clear the first two hurdles of the Grand Slam since Jack Nicklaus in 1972. Woods shot 70-68 the first two rounds, he said he was playing well, and all systems were set to keep it going on the weekend. The second big story was the weather. Stewart Cink, Padraig Harrington and others have called the crud that rolled in for the late tee times Saturday afternoon as the worst they ever played in, and Woods would likely give them no argument. He shot 81, one of 10 scores in the 80s that day and the first time Woods had failed to break 80 as a professional. His chances at the Grand Slam had all but ended. His final-round 65 was payback, and proof that he really was playing well despite the freak storm. 8. 65, 2000 U.S. OPEN (1st rd.) Pebble Beach Golf Links, Pebble Beach, Calif. End of round position: 1st Event finish: Won Unsatisfied with the way the ball was coming off his putter, Woods spent some extra time on the practice green Wednesday. Boy did it pay off. Of his six opening-round birdies, four were of the kick-in variety, but a handful of mid-length par saves were equally crucial in this tone-setter. He only got better from there, showing total command from tee to green and making just about everything he looked at – a frightening combination to his peers. Woods took a 10-shot lead into the final round – “I knew I had no chance,” said Ernie Els, who led the chase pack – and at 12 under par overall authored a gaudy, 15-shot victory over Els and Miguel Angel Jimenez. Woods’ performance that week is considered perhaps the best golf ever played, none better than what he summoned in the opening round. He hit 11 of 14 fairways, and just 12 greens in regulation, and was positively automatic with the putter – a sign of things to come. “It’s unconscionable to me that he can make that many putts,” Hale Irwin said, “but he did.” 9. 65, 1998 OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP (1st rd.) Royal Birkdale Golf Club, Southport, England End of round position: T1 Event finish: 3rd It was a rare week in which Woods took the first-round lead and did not win. In light winds and sunshine in the opening round, he scrambled brilliantly for pars on the opening two holes, the latter after thrashing a 9-iron out of near knee-high rough to the middle of the green. The young and powerful Woods almost made a mockery of the 411-yard ninth, moving photographers and fans out of his line before blasting his ball over a diabolical bunker that guards the corner of the dogleg. His 380-yard tee ball left just a flick-wedge to the green. It was a shake-your-head moment for most, more proof the young phenom was changing the game. Three more birdies on the back side were countered by two bogeys, the last coming on 18 to give up sole possession of the lead. A lipped out 3-footer on 12 would prove costly. His opening 5-under 65 was enough to share the lead with John Huston, but the field would be blown off the map over the next two rounds, with Woods shooting 73-77. In an incredible turnaround, a final-round 66 from Woods – one of just nine sub-par rounds that Sunday – brought him all the way back to within one of a playoff, where his pal Mark O’Meara bested Brian Watts for the Claret Jug. 10. 65, 1997 MASTERS (3rd rd.) Augusta National G.C., Augusta, Ga. End of round position: 1st (from 1st) Event finish: Won As Tiger-mania built to a crescendo in Woods’ first Masters as a professional, the 21-year-old produced a nearly flawless ball-striking effort on Saturday at Augusta National, leaving all others behind. Woods hit 13 of 14 fairways, 17 of 18 greens and carded a bogey-free 65 that extended a three-stroke lead over Colin Montgomerie to a nine-stroke lead over Constantino Rocca. As the patrons roared at every turn, Woods methodically went about his business, making birdies on three of four par-5 holes and adding yet more birdies on Nos. 5, 7, 11 and 18. His 65 convinced even the last remaining skeptics he would win. Prior to Saturday’s third round, Montgomerie remarked that Woods’ lack of major-championship experience could prove a factor on the weekend. After their Saturday pairing, though, in which a humbled Montgomerie was beat by nine strokes, the Scotsman entered the press room to opine, “There is no chance humanly possible that Tiger is just going to lose this tournament.” He was correct, as Woods proceeded to shoot a final-round 69 for a 12-stroke runaway, his first of 15 major titles. “It was the easiest 65 I’ve ever seen,” Montgomerie said later.

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