Haas has lead; Woods in hunt
Tiger Woods showed signs of life. Jay Haas showed no signs of age.
A month from turning 51, Haas finished strongly Friday in the Tour Championship in Atlanta by saving par on the 17th from 60 feet away in a bunker, and making a 12-foot birdie putt for a 4-under-par 66 and a two-shot lead over Stephen Ames.
Not bad for the oldest guy to qualify for the Tour Championship.
“Any time I lead is a great feeling at 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever it is,” said Haas, who was at 7-under 133. “It’s way too early to get too excited about it. But I haven’t done it with smoke and mirrors. I’ve played solid golf, and that gives me encouragement for the weekend.”
Woods had reason to be encouraged, too.
Winless for eight months, Woods made two birdies with stunning recovery shots and matched his best score of the year, a bogey-free 64 that left him three shots back going into the weekend.
“I played myself right back into the tournament,” Woods said.
U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen had a 66 and joined Woods at 4-under 136.
Vijay Singh has some catching up to do if he wants to end the year with 10 victories. The 41-year-old Fijian took 35 putts on a cool, breezy afternoon and shot 73, ending his streak of 13 rounds at par or better. That left Singh in 17th place among 30 players, seven shots out of the lead.
Almost as impressive as his score was the way Haas finished. The final three holes are among the toughest at East Lake, and they knocked Mike Weir and Zach Johnson off the leaderboard.
Weir was at 6 under and in the lead until a bogey-bogey-double bogey finish, taking four shots from just behind the 18th green to sink to a 69 and finished at 2 under. Johnson was at 5 under until he ran into problems on the 16th, hitting an air ball with his wedge from behind the green and making triple bogey.
Not so for Haas.
From 233 yards in the 16th fairway, a 481-yard hole that played into the wind, Haas roped a 3-iron into about 15 feet and got so excited about that shot that he nearly three-putted, although any kind of par is a relief. From the right bunker on the 17th, he blasted out to 2 feet.
He finished in style with a tricky putt straight down the slope, matching the lowest 36-hole score in the four years the Tour Championship has been played at East Lake.
LPGA: Mizuno Classic
Annika Sorenstam started her quest for a fourth consecutive Mizuno Classic title with an eagle and held a share of the lead after the first round in Otsu, Japan.
The Swede, ranked No. 1, carded a 63 and was tied with Japan’s Chihiro Nakajima at 9-under at the $1 million LPGA Tour tournament.
Sorenstam opened with an eagle at the par-5 first and had seven birdies in a bogey-free round, while Nakajima fired a 30 on the back nine, including six birdies.
The pair was three strokes ahead of Rachel Teske and Aree Song at 66.
Laura Davies, Karrie Webb, South Koreans Grace Park and Han Hee-won and Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa were one stroke further back at 5-under 67.