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    Justin Thomas Seeks His Second P.G.A. Championship Victory

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    He’ll have to get past several rising young players to win his second major title. Tiger Woods made the cut at the P.G.A. Championship but is a dozen strokes off the lead.TULSA, Okla. — Much of the late second-round drama on Friday at the 2022 P.G.A. Championship involved Tiger Woods’s desperate quest to remain in the tournament. In the end, a limping Woods rallied to make the event’s halfway cut by shooting a one-under-par 69 that left him tied for 53rd.But the overriding theme of the day was a surging youth movement that took control of the leaderboard. Will Zalatoris, 25, who has a top 10 finish in four of the last five majors he has entered, led the charge with a second round 65 that moved him to nine-under for the event. Mito Pereira, 27, shot 64 on Friday and trailed Zalatoris by one stroke.Overall, there were eight golfers under 30 in the top 10 at the tournament’s halfway mark.Will Zalatoris leads the P.G.A. Championship by a stroke after two rounds.Eric Gay/Associated PressThe first of that crew to take the tournament lead was Justin Thomas, 29. With a father and a grandfather who were golf instructors, Thomas has the genes for excellence in the sport. He rose to be a top junior player, appeared in a PGA Tour event while in high school and was named the nation’s top college golfer soon afterward.By 2017, when Thomas was 24, he won his first major golf title, the P.G.A. Championship. No one would have blamed the Thomas family for investing in a mammoth trophy case to house all the top prizes to come.Yet while Thomas has won his share of tour events, five years later he has not added to his collection of major championships, something he has called an underachievement. “I have not even close to performed well in my entire career in majors,” he said last month.Battling gusting, swirling winds at the Southern Hills Country Club, Thomas mixed patience and aggression to shoot his second consecutive three-under-par 67, which moved him into third place at day’s end.Thomas has contended at the halfway mark of other major tournaments since 2017 and failed to win, but he feels buoyed by a new mind-set this season, which has been aided by a new, experienced hand at his side in Jim Mackay, who spent 25 years as Phil Mickelson’s caddie.“It’s still golf, so it’s pretty hard sometimes,” Thomas said after his round on Friday. “But I’m very, very pleased with where everything is at and the frame of mind and the state of mind that I’m in.”He added: “We’re halfway through this tournament, so it’s still a long way from home.”Jim Mackay, left, joined Thomas after 25 years caddying for Phil Mickelson.Richard Heathcote/Getty ImagesMackay had occasionally caddied for Thomas in previous seasons after separating from Mickelson five years ago. Eight months ago, Thomas asked Mackay, whose nickname is Bones, to take the job full time.“Bones is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen,” Thomas said. “He never wants to be underprepared. He wants to make sure he does everything he can so that he makes it feel like we have the best chance we can to win. And that’s very comforting as a player, because I have all the faith in the world in my caddie.”Thomas began his round on Friday on the 10th tee and had two birdies and a bogey in his opening nine to make the turn at four under par for the tournament. With impressive length off the tee — he averaged 312.2 yards in driving distance Friday — he was able to par the challenging first two par-4 holes, which both measured more than 480 yards long. Two more pars followed at the third and fourth holes, and on the par-5 fifth hole, he sank a 24-foot birdie putt. After three routine pars, Thomas smashed a pinpoint drive on his final hole, and his approach shot from 92 yards to the uphill, plateaued ninth green stopped nine feet from the pin. Thomas then calmly rolled in his last birdie putt.“I’m just feeling very comfortable standing over the ball, which is a good feeling,” Thomas said. “The way I played the last hole, I couldn’t have really drawn it up any better. Leaving that gap wedge from the fairway just under the hole there and making that putt right in the middle. That was a nice way to end it.”Zalatoris, who was tied for sixth at the Masters last month and was the Masters runner-up a year ago, had five birdies without a bogey on Friday. Pereira had seven birdies with one bogey. Bubba Watson, who was the elder near the top of the leaderboard at 43, shot 63 in the second round and was in fourth place. Rory McIlroy, 33, shot 71 Friday and is tied for fifth overall with Davis Riley and Abraham Ancer.Tiger Woods on Friday made two birdies on the back nine and made the cut.Sam Greenwood/Getty ImagesWoods was four over par after the first round and played his opening nine holes on Friday in even par with a birdie on the fifth hole and a sloppy bogey on the eighth.After sinking a 10-foot birdie putt on the 10th hole, Woods dropped to three under for the tournament. He then made what appeared to be a devastating mistake on the par 3 11th hole when his tee shot landed left of the green and a delicate flop shot sailed over the green and trickled into a bunker. That blunder led to a double bogey, which pushed Woods to five over par — and outside the cut line.But Woods found the resolve for a spirited comeback. He rolled in an eight-foot birdie putt at the par 5 13th hole and made another birdie putt from four feet after a spectacular approach shot from 209 yards on the par 4 16th hole. He concluded his round with pars on the closing two holes.Afterward, Woods, who is three over par for the tournament, said he was just happy “to play golf again.” He added: “You can’t win the tournament if you miss the cut. I’ve won tournaments — not major championships — but I’ve won tournaments on the cut number. There’s a reason why you fight hard and you’re able to give yourself a chance on the weekend. You just never know when you might get hot.” More

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      Tiger Woods Limps Through a Disappointing Round at PGA Championship

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      Woods could make only wry jokes after a painful and disappointing first round at the P.G.A. Championship.TULSA, Okla. — Tiger Woods has a good sense of humor, though it is rare for him to use it in a public setting. But at 46, he is evolving. What was once unthinkable for him — playfully mocking his poor play on the golf course — is one of his new, winsome tools.On Thursday, six weeks after his stirring comeback at the Masters Tournament, Woods returned to competitive golf in the first round of the P.G.A. Championship. After a blazing start with two early birdies, Woods was limping a little on his right leg, which was surgically reconstructed after multiple serious fractures sustained in his horrific car crash early last year. A couple of holes later, Woods was limping a lot, even sometimes using a golf club like a cane to ascend or descend hills.Not surprisingly, his score soon reflected his infirmity as he shot a four-over-par 74 with seven bogeys in his final 13 holes. After he had hobbled to a rostrum for a news conference, he was asked about his rebuilt leg.“Yeah, not feeling as good as I would like it to be,” he said with a smile. Woods added that he could not put weight on his right leg in his backswing — known as loading — and he also struggled to push off his leg on the downswing, too.“Loading hurts, pressing off it hurts, and walking hurts and twisting hurts,” he said.Woods then deadpanned: “It’s just golf. If I don’t play that, if I don’t do that, then I’m all right.”“Loading hurts, pressing off it hurts, and walking hurts and twisting hurts,” Woods said.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“We’ll start the recovery process and get after it tomorrow,” he added, predicting that his evening would include ice baths and myriad efforts to reduce inflammation in his right leg.Tiger Woods’s Lasting Impact and Uncertain FutureThe star golfer, one of the most influential athletes of the last quarter-century, is mounting a comeback after being badly injured in a car crash.The 2022 Masters: After saying that he would step back from competitive golf, Tiger Woods teed off at Augusta once again.Four Days That Changed Golf: When Woods won the 1997 Masters, he remade the game and catapulted himself to stardom.A Complicated Legacy: Our columnist looks back at Woods’s stunning feats and shocking falls.His Enduring Influence: Even when Woods is not playing, his impact on the sport can be felt at a PGA tournament.And so, Woods’s ongoing return to elite golf is following the bumpy, irregular progression that even he forecast before the Masters when he said he expected a series of good days and bad days.“It’s a process,” Woods said.Part of that process, as Woods acknowledged on Tuesday, was that his right leg and his ailing back, which has been operated on five times, no longer allowed him to practice for long periods of time, which had been routine for him since he was a kindergartner. While watching Woods play on Thursday, it was easy to wonder if some of his troubles on the golf course were related to a lack of preparation off it, especially for someone like Woods who was once renowned for exhausting work habits.For example, one of Woods’s playing partners Thursday was Rory McIlroy, who is the first-round leader after a five-under-par 65. McIlroy successfully navigated the tricky sloping greens of the Southern Hills Country Club with deft chipping, bunker play and deadly accurate putting.Woods’s short game was once probably his greatest strength, but on Thursday it let him down repeatedly. Moreover, Woods appeared uncomfortable, or unsure, over those shots, which was startling. Woods with a wedge or a putter in his hands had always been commanding and cocksure.But on the sixth hole that Woods played Thursday, when he was still two under par for the round, he was in a greenside bunker with a fairly straightforward shot to the pin, which was 23 feet away. Shockingly, he blasted his shot 21 feet past the hole and made bogey.Three holes later, playing the 18th hole because his group began its round on the 10th tee, Woods was in another greenside bunker and again thumped his ball 20 feet past the hole for a bogey. Even after Woods rallied for a birdie three holes later, another bunker shot on the next hole sailed over the green and led to yet another bogey.Woods looked exasperated, and as often happens to any golfer, missteps in one facet of the game led to a lack of execution in another part of part of the game as Woods failed to convert several long- or medium-range putts. Keep in mind that some people think Woods was the greatest pressure putter of golf’s modern era.Asked about his difficulties from the sand, Woods said: “Yeah, all the bunker shots sort of came out hot.”Tiger Woods playing from the bunker near the eighth green during the first round of the P.G.A. Championship.Michael Madrid/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBut his bunker play was not the only way Thursday’s round seemed uncharacteristic for Woods. For more than 25 years, Woods was known as an aggressive golfer, and he all but invented the bombing-it-off-the-tee-with-a-driver style that has overtaken the sport.But on Thursday, as McIlroy and the third golfer in the grouping, Jordan Spieth, launched drivers far down the fairway, Woods was hitting long irons and playing for position. Sometimes he was more than 60 yards behind McIlroy off the tee, although as Woods later said, not being able to push off his right leg caused him to slice shots to the right.“I wouldn’t have been so far back if I would have hit the iron shot solid and put the ball in the fairway,” he said. “I was playing to my spots, and those guys obviously have a different game plan. The game is just different. It’s much more aggressive now, and I know that. But I was playing to my spots. If I would have hit the ball solidly on those two holes and put the ball in the fairway, I would have been fine.”He continued: “But I didn’t do that. I put the ball in the rough.”The smile that Woods brought to the beginning of his news conference was dissipating. The golf comeback that seemed unlikely only 15 months ago would continue Friday, Woods said. But before he walked away with a noticeable, lurching limp, Woods had a last comment.“It was a frustrating day,” he said. More

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      Tiger Woods Is on the Course at the P.G.A. Championship

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      In his first tournament since the Masters in April, Woods finished his first nine holes at even par but ended the round at a disappointing four over.Tiger Woods returned to a major championship on Thursday, and after a good start, things started to go awry.Playing in a star-studded group with Jordan Spieth and Rory McIlroy, Woods finished at four over par at the P.G.A. Championship. McIlroy was the early clubhouse leader at five under.Playing at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., where he won the 2007 P.G.A. Championship, Woods at first showed few obvious signs of the severe leg injuries he sustained in a car crash in February 2021. Toward the end of his first nine holes, he appeared to start limping a little more.And though he got down to two under in the early going, his second-nine performance was poor.Woods had returned to the majors at the Masters last month after missing more than 500 days of top-flight golf following his crash. His one-under opening round raised the echoes of the past, but he struggled the rest of the way, making the cut but finishing 47th. At that tournament, he was limping and seemed to struggle to crouch fully to line up putts.Woods started on the 10th hole Thursday, and birdied it with a 3-foot putt after a flawless chip. He birdied the 14th as well with a 15-footer. But he found the rough and a bunker on 15 and could not get up and down, falling back to one under.On the 18th, a difficult hole, he found a greenside bunker with a poor iron shot and missed a 20-foot putt to fall back to even.That started a poor stretch, and he made two more bogeys, at No. 1 — a tee shot into the rough behind a tree was the culprit — and at No. 2, where he knocked a long putt from the fringe 10 feet past and missed the comebacker.Woods struck back with a birdie on No. 3, making a 10-foot-plus putt that got his big gallery going. But he gave that right back with a bad bunker shot on No. 4, which rolled over and off the green. He wound up with another bogey.He dropped another stroke on 8, finding a bunker on the challenging par 3, then blowing the next shot far past the hole and failing to make the long putt back.On the ninth, he seemed to get lucky when his tee shot caromed off a tree and landed in the fairway. But his second shot flew over the green, and he flubbed the chip, not reaching the green. Two more shots, and he had another bogey. More

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      P.G.A. Championship: Jordan Spieth Aims for Career Grand Slam

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      And why not? After a couple of years of uncharacteristically mediocre play, he sees an opportunity at the P.G.A. Championship to complete a career Grand Slam.TULSA, Okla. — Sixteen months ago, Jordan Spieth spent long stretches during post-round news conferences answering questions about what was wrong with him.Or what was missing from his once prized golf game.The world’s top-ranked men’s player for much of 2015-16 and the winner of three major championships in roughly the same period, Spieth had tumbled to 92nd in the world rankings by January of last year. His best finish at a 2020 major had been a tie for 46th.In this time, Spieth handled the almost weekly inquisition about whether he would ever regain his form with poise and sincerity. For the most part, he kept his smile. But that smile is far wider now. With a rally in 2021 that included a second-place finish at the British Open and a surge this year that has included a 13th PGA Tour victory and two second-place finishes, Spieth has climbed back into the top 10 worldwide.On Wednesday, one day before the first round of the 2022 P.G.A. Championship, Spieth met with reporters and happily spent most of his time answering questions about whether he might achieve a measure of golfing immortality this week.Jordan Spieth chipped to the green on Wednesday while practicing for the P.G.A. Championship in Tulsa, Okla.Matt York/Associated PressOnly five golfers — Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods — have won each of the game’s major championships. With victories at the Masters, the U.S. Open and the British Open, Spieth, 28, needs only a P.G.A. Championship title to join that gilded group.“It’s the elephant in the room for me,” Spieth said Wednesday with a small grin. “If you told me I was going to win one tournament the rest of my life, I’d say I want to win this one. Long term, it would be really cool to say that you captured the four biggest golf tournaments in the world that are played in different parts of the world and different styles, too. So you feel like you kind of accomplished golf when you win a career Grand Slam.”Tiger Woods’s Lasting Impact and Uncertain FutureThe star golfer, one of the most influential athletes of the last quarter-century, is mounting a comeback after being badly injured in a car crash.The 2022 Masters: After saying that he would step back from competitive golf, Tiger Woods teed off at Augusta once again.Four Days That Changed Golf: When Woods won the 1997 Masters, he remade the game and catapulted himself to stardom.A Complicated Legacy: Our columnist looks back at Woods’s stunning feats and shocking falls.His Enduring Influence: Even when Woods is not playing, his impact on the sport can be felt at a PGA tournament.Accomplished golf? As in mastered it? That’s an almost celestial ambition in a sport that keeps almost all of its devotees cruelly grounded on a regular basis. But Spieth can be forgiven. When his game was in an abyss, he endured many months muttering to himself as he marched off the tee on his way to the high rough. And no golfer mutters to himself so systematically, indeed professionally, with the zany zeal that Spieth exhibits.Even with his golf ball sailing straight and farther now, Spieth has not stopped his frequent self-commentary on the golf course, always with his forbearing caddie, Michael Greller, the former sixth grade math teacher, nodding silently as he walks alongside his boss.Greller’s role should not be underestimated given Spieth’s active brain (and mouth). Spieth acknowledged as much Wednesday.“I’ve been trying to really have some fun more, and Michael does a good job with that,” Spieth said. “If I wake up tomorrow a little on the wrong side of the bed, as we all do, he’ll try and talk to me about something other than golf. He’ll step in, and having kind of a friend on the bag that can keep it light can sometimes turn things in that direction.”Jordan Spieth handed a club to his caddie, Michael Greller, during a practice round leading up to the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in April.Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesSpieth will be tested in other ways in Thursday’s first round. He will play with Woods and the four-time major champion Rory McIlroy, a grouping that is likely to be followed by about 70 percent of the tens of thousands of fans on the grounds at Southern Hills Country Club. The atmosphere will be charged, and because a golf gallery does not remain seated as at other sporting events, it will become more like a noisy, chaotic, ever-moving wave.But Spieth, whose wife, Annie, gave birth to the couple’s first child, a son, Sammy, in November, had a different take.“I’ll get to tell my kid about this someday — I got to play with Tiger in a major,” Spieth said.He added that he had done it before, but as he acknowledged Woods’s near-fatal car crash in February 2021, he added: “Last year, you weren’t sure if that was ever going to happen again.”Spieth did concede that the massive crowd could be a distraction, but one he has gotten used to. When he nearly won the Masters as a 20-year-old and finished first at the tournament a year later, in 2015, Spieth attracted some teeming crowds himself.“Sometimes, when the crowds get big enough, it’s kind of just a color blur in a way,” he said. “But Tiger and Rory are great to play with. They’re quick. They’re positive. I think you have to embrace it and recognize that it’s cool and it’s obviously great for golf.”The grouping might even be a blessing, Spieth said, as a way to keep his mind off the opportunity to achieve the career Grand Slam of major championships.“If I can play well these next couple days, given the crowds that will be out there, then I think the weekend might actually feel a little like a breather in a way,” he said. “So that’s how I’m looking at it.” More

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      Tiger Woods Calls Phil Mickelson’s Viewpoints ‘Polarizing’

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      In remarks before the P.G.A. Championship, Tiger Woods distanced himself from his longtime rival, Phil Mickelson, who stirred controversy with his support of an upstart Saudi-backed golf tour.TULSA, Okla. — On Tuesday, when Tiger Woods spoke publicly for the first time since his stunning comeback at last month’s Masters Tournament, the expected topic was to be his continuing recovery from a near-fatal 2021 car crash. Woods did indeed say his reconstructed right leg felt stronger as he prepared for this week’s P.G.A. Championship, which begins Thursday at Tulsa’s Southern Hills Country Club.But perhaps for the first time at any news conference in Woods’s 30-plus years in the public eye, he spent nearly as much time discussing a longtime rival, Phil Mickelson, as he did himself. And Woods was not usually chatting about Mickelson in flattering terms.Woods was emphatic about distancing himself from Mickelson, who will not defend his P.G.A. Championship title and has not played since he made incendiary remarks in February in support of a Saudi-backed golf league that hopes to rival the established PGA Tour.While Mickelson in the past has privately reached out to Woods during his struggles, which have included a sensational marital infidelity scandal in 2009 and the aftermath of a tumbling car crash on a Los Angeles-area boulevard last year, Woods said on Tuesday that he has not contacted Mickelson.“I have not reached out to him; I have not spoken to him,” Woods said. “A lot of it has not to do with, I think, personal issues. It was our viewpoints of how the tour should be run and could be run, and what players are playing for and how we are playing for it. I have a completely different stance on that, so no, I have not.”Woods added: “We miss him being out here. I mean, he’s a big draw for the game of golf. He’s just taking his time and we all wish him the best when he comes back.”A poster of Phil Mickelson, last year’s P.G.A. champion, greets spectators at Southern Hills. Mickelson will not play this year.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockBut after conceding that the social media landscape had escalated and quickly polarized the dispute between the PGA Tour and the breakaway league, Woods said: “And the viewpoints that Phil has made with the tour and what the tour has meant to all of us has been polarizing as well.”Mickelson applied for a release from the PGA Tour to play in the inaugural event of the upstart golf circuit, LIV Golf, next month outside London. The PGA Tour denied Mickelson’s request and any made by its members, and it has threatened to suspend or otherwise discipline players who play in the alternative tour’s events. In February, Mickelson provoked a hailstorm of criticism after he acknowledged Saudi Arabia had a “horrible record on human rights” — including the murder of a Washington Post journalist — but said he was still talking with, and aiding, the new tour because it was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to apply pressure on the PGA Tour. Earlier this year, Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of “obnoxious greed.” He later said his remarks were “reckless.”On Tuesday, when Woods was asked how his disagreements with Mickelson could be resolved, Woods replied: “I don’t know if he has to resolve it or not. I understand different viewpoints, but I believe in legacies. I believe in major championships. I believe in big events, comparisons to historical figures of the past. There’s plenty of money out here. The tour is growing. But it’s just like any other sport, you have to go out there and earn it.”When he wasn’t discussing Mickelson on Tuesday, Woods’s rebuilt right leg did look considerably stronger than it did last month when he labored to ascend seemingly every hill during the Masters Tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. During a practice round in Tulsa, Woods actually half-jogged up a steep incline.During the final round of the Masters Tournament last month at Augusta National Golf Club, Woods used an iron to support himself as he walked. Doug Mills/The New York TimesWhen asked how much he had physically improved during the last five weeks of additional rehabilitation for the serious injuries incurred in his 2021 crash, Woods smiled.“The first mountain I climbed was Everest,” he said. “So, yeah, I’m better than the last time I played a tournament.” He added: “I still have tough days, and things aren’t going to be as easy as people might think. Still, I’m doing better — more positive days.”But tellingly, Woods, who used to be known for almost ceaseless practice, especially with his putter, scoffed when he was asked if he can now practice enough.“Practicing a lot? No, I don’t do that anymore,” he answered. “Bending over for a long time, hitting a bunch of putts like I used to? No, that doesn’t happen — not with my back the way it is.”Some things, however, have not changed. Woods never showed up for an event unless he believed he could finish first. That resolve has not wavered.“I feel like I can — definitely,” Woods responded when asked if he could win. “I just have to go out there and do it. Starts on Thursday and I’ll be ready.”Jon Rahm, who is the world’s top-ranked men’s golfer and also in this week’s field, said he was not surprised that Woods wants to win every tournament.“Hey, the world wants him to win,” Rahm said with a grin.In what will be an eye-catching grouping, Rory McIlroy will play in Thursday’s first round with Woods and Jordan Spieth, who has won every major golf title but the P.G.A. Championship. McIlroy expects to see an upgrade from the Woods who started strong at last month’s Masters but faded in the final two rounds.“It’s been six weeks or so since Augusta?” McIlroy asked. “Six weeks is a long enough time to recover from that week and then build yourself back up again.” More