Tiger Woods of old shows up to take three-stroke lead at Tour Championship
Former world number one rolls back the years to be in contention on final day
What year is this, anyway? Who threw the calendar into reverse? And how can the rest of us get on that ride?
For the first handful of holes at the Tour Championship on Saturday, it was beginning to look just a little like 1997, when a 21-year-old began writing his own myth, lapping the Masters field, winning by a dozen strokes.
Or 2001, when he finished off a personal grand slam by making the Masters his fourth consecutive major victory. Or 2006, when he set a PGA Championship record with only three bogeys in four days. Or 2007, when he was a one-man wildfire scorching East Lake, shooting 23-under for four days and winning the Tour Championship by eight shots.
Certainly not 2018, which Tiger Woods entered with a medical file as thick as a 28-ounce porterhouse and the personal life that once made him must reading in the grocery check-out line for months.
Yet it can be reported with reasonable certainty that Woods indeed was the one at East Lake shooting the day’s low round of 65 on Saturday, borrowing just a bit from all those past days of competitive tyranny and grabbing this Tour Championship by the seat of its sharply pleated pants. At 12-under, he’ll report to Sunday with a three-shot lead over the European tag team of Rory McIlroy and Justin Rose.
