The Memorial Tournament saw some rough play from Tiger Woods on Saturday after the number one golfer in the world put up the worst nine hole score of his career and ended up with a 79 heading into the last day of play on Sunday.
Woods finished the first round under par before shooting one over on Friday and his play Saturday was not sharp at all, as he ended up with a third-round 79 to sit 16 shots behind Matt Kuchar, who is on top of the leaderboard heading into the final day. Woods shot the worst nine hole score of his career with a 44 and had his worst round at Memorial to end up tied for 69th place in the tournament with an eight over 244. Woods came into the tournament hot after winning four times in seven starts, including the Players Championship, and the Memorial marks his last tournament before playing at the U.S. Open later in June.
Woods said he felt good on the course but that something was off and one reason he has struggled at the Memorial is due to his play on the par five holes, which he has mostly dominated this season. Woods has done extremely well this year from the tee and has been excellent with his putter, but throughout Saturday he struggled and now he likely is way too far out of contention to get back into things. Woods struggled and ended up with one triple bogey to go along with two doubles and three other bogeys while also hitting three birdies on the round.
Woods is the defending champion at the tournament, but he will need a historic day to get back into things on Sunday and he likely will try to work out any kinks that he can before heading to Merion for the US Open. Woods has never shot as high as a 44 in that span of holes and he now will have to rebound on Sunday after dealing with some harsh weather earlier in the week and it comes after he shot 75 twice last year. This season Woods has been excellent while winning the Farmers Insurance Open, WGC Cadillac Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational as well as the Players Championship in his previous start while dealing with some Sergio Garcia drama.
Woods is back as the number one golfer in the world after chasing down Rory McIlroy, but he sure didn't look like it on Saturday and McIlroy himself was out of things with an awful round earlier in the week and ended up with a 75, an improvement from the previous round. Bill Haas was tops on the leaderboard heading into Saturday and he finished with a 76 after hitting three bogeys to finish his day, while Kuchar ended up two shots up on Kevin Chappell and Kyle Stanley, who were both at six under.