Woods trailing at Sawgrass
Tiger Woods trailed six shots off the lead after just seven holes of the Players Championship at Sawgrass in Florida today.
While Australian Robert Allenby raced to four under par on the back nine, Woods bogeyed the fourth and fifth holes and at that point was only one stroke off last place.
The world number one, winner of three of his four events so far this season, appeared out-of-sorts right from a start delayed for 30 minutes because of an almighty rain, thunder, lightning and hail storm in the Jacksonville area.
As much as three inches of rain fell in one hour just before daybreak. But the Tournament Players Course escaped the worst of it, and the sun was shining by the time the $6.5 (€6.1m) event began.
Woods missed the opening fairway, was in rough again at the long second – and although he saved par both times, he could not recover from pushing his approaches to the fourth and fifth.
Allenby birdied the 12th, 14th, 16th and short 17th to be one ahead of former Open champion John Daly, Jay Haas and Bob Tway who was four under himself before bogeying the 18th.
Sergio Garcia should have been joint-second as well but missed a four-foot birdie chance on the 17th, while Paul Lawrie was one under after five and Darren Clarke level par after six.
Meanwhile, there was a fourth withdrawal from the event – American Ryder Cup player Scott Hoch joining Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Canadian Ian Leggatt. Hoch had a left wrist injury.
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