Woods gets creative, plays his way into final pairing

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Condon/PGA TOUR

Tiger Woods relied on his rescue shots to keep him in the game on Saturday.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Left-handed from beside a tree trunk. Perched perilously above Pete Dye's signature railroad ties.

You name the situation, and Tiger Woods had a solution for it Saturday during the third round of THE PLAYERS Championship. And once again on this steamy afternoon, his never-say-die attitude was as important as those 14 incomparable, but sometimes uncooperative clubs in his bag.

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The result was a determined 70 that included birdies at the 16th and 17th holes, which boosted Woods to the upper echelon of the leadeboard. The world No. 1 finished 54 holes at 6 under, tied with five others for second, five strokes off the lead.

That's doable, of course. Woods made up a five-stroke deficit to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard earlier this year in just his third start of the season. He also came from five behind at the 2000 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am.

"I just kept saying if I keep plodding along, not coming back, that's the whole idea, just making pars, par after par," Woods explained. "If I happen to sprinkle in a birdie, that would be fine. But I made a few bogeys out there and thought it would have been a little bit better."

His perspective undoubtedly changed a tad in the two hours between the time he uttered those words and Alex Cejka birdied the 18th hole. Suddenly, he was in Sunday's final group with the 38-year-old German after Henrik Stenson, Ian Poulter and Kevin Na hit the skids.

"I've played a lot with him (Tiger), and I'm sure he's going to come firing on all cylinders tomorrow like he always does on Sunday when he has a chance to win," Stenson said. "The key is just to stick to your own game and hopefully play better than he does.

At the start of the third round, though, Woods' task had seemed formidable.

He was tied for 22nd with 21 players ahead of him and a Stadium Course seemingly at its most generous. All that changed when the leaders came out and encountered greens baked by three days of sun that were running 12 on the Stimpmeter.

"These greens got really dry and really crusty," Woods said. "The shots just weren't holding. Before, yeah, they were fast, but they weren't as springy as this. They're not putting a whole lot of the water on these greens.

"It didn't start drying (for us) out until about 9. The leaders I'm sure have been playing with it all day."

The last time Woods shot three sub-par rounds at the Stadium Course? That was in 2001, when he closed with three straight to win his only PLAYERS title. He actually posted all four under par the previous year in finishing second to Hal Sutton.

Since then, though, Woods' record on Pete Dye's most diabolical layout has been spotty, at best. He hasn't finished higher than a tie for 11th in the PGA TOUR's marquee event that annually boasts the strongest field, top-to-bottom, in the game.

The 14-time major champion is poised to change his luck on Sunday, though.

"This is basically our fifth major, and that's how it's playing," Woods said. "It's playing just like a major championship. It's fast, it's hard, it's dry. And you just have to keep plodding along."

Woods likes the Stadium when it plays firm and fast, which was the impetus for the 2007 move to May. That was also the last time the world's No. 1 played in THE PLAYERS due to last year's arthroscopic surgery that preceded June's ACL reconstruction.

In his still brief return, Woods has admittedly been inconsistent. On Saturday, though, when his shots failed him, the 66-time TOUR champ relied on his abundant imagination and talent to get him through.

Take the 11th hole when his tee shot veered left and settled near the base of a tree. Woods had no option but to take a wedge and play the shot left-handed -- like he and his buddies sometimes do back home in Orlando -- and picked it clean across the fairway.

Turns out, Woods hit the ball too good -- "it's hard to spin the ball left handed," he grinned -- and he had to play his third left off an overhanging tree on the way to an ill-timed bogey on the par 5. He regrouped with a birdie at the next, though.

Another bogey at the 15th, when his second shot settled, short-sided in a swale beside the green, brought Woods back to 4 under for the tournament. But he roared back into contention with a birdie at the par-5 16th and a 9-footer on the treacherous 17th.

"I played almost a foot and a half of break there, that little short putt," Woods said. "And I was joking with Stevie (Williams, his caddy), thank goodness I'm wearing spikes. At least I can hold myself on that slope."

At the time, Woods thought those birdies kept him on the "periphery" of the tournament. He just didn't know how close -- not even as he tip-toed over to his third shot just inches above the water beside the 18th green and chipped to 4 feet for the last crucial save.

"We didn't see any splash, so that was good," Woods said as he thought about the shot he hit from the trees on the right side of the fairway. "I figured probably it would end up in the bunker, but it was fine where it was at."

Just like he is -- in the final group on Sunday.