The numbers just keep adding up for Tiger Woods. …. 28 on the front nine Friday, 13 under par in his first 27 holes, holing a bunker shot from 63 feet, making a 70-foot eagle putt, shooting 63 in the second round and assembling a three-shot lead over Woody Austin in the $7 million Tour Championship.
It’s still too early to hand Woods the winner’s check, but there’s nothing like the present time to calculate what’s at stake here.
Try crunching these numbers. If Woods wins Sunday, he will have won two of the four playoff tournaments, taken the $10 million Fed Ex Cup Cup bonus and earned $13 million of the $63 million total payout of the entire playoff — about 21 percent.
Yes, there are still 36 holes to go in the Fed Ex Cup finale, but plenty of people knew what Tim Clark meant when he was asked about the weekend.
“Second place,” Clark said. “I mean, it looks like that’s what we’re playing for right now.”
On a long day, Woods made short work of East Lake Country Club. He played seven holes to complete his first round with a 6-under 64, then went even lower with a 7-under 63.
Woods’ explanation: “I had a nice little roll there.”
You could say that. Woods’ 13-under-par total of 127 is the second-lowest opening 36 holes of his career. Woods started the day four shots behind Clark but had a four-shot lead over Adam Scott after nine holes of his second round, and he rolled in an 18-footer for a birdie at the 18th to end a remarkable round and a dazzling day.
Most of the time the sky was a dull gray, but Woods was positively lighting up the course, especially in a six-hole stretch on the front nine in his second round.
Woods made five consecutive birdies, including that bunker shot that dropped into the fifth hole (which he said he didn’t see), and then coaxed a cross-country 70-foot putt into the hole at the ninth — the only eagle on the hole so far in the tournament.
“Pure luck,” Woods said. “If you could have been right behind the golf ball and seen how that thing was bouncing all over the place, it was actually quite funny.”
When the ball dropped, Woods covered his eyes and started to chuckle. The way things are going for Woods, no one else is laughing.
