Mayfair leads, Woods out of Quail Hollow
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2010 Quail Hollow Championship | Round Two | 01 May 2010
Billy Mayfair leads the Quail Hollow Championship by one over Angel Cabrera after 36 holes of the event in Charlotte in North Carolina but while his return to form makes a nice, feel good story it pales in comparison to the missed cut of Tiger Woods.
After failing to take advantage of the good morning conditions when recording a round of 74 on day one, Woods started behind the eight ball as far as the cut was concerned. He played in the second half of the draw today and made a solid enough start with an early birdie and an opening nine of even par.
At that point Woods was just one shot outside of the projected cutline of 1 over but before long his task would become impossible. Dropped shots at the 10th, 11th and 12th were followed soon after by double bogeys at the 14th and 15th eventually leading to an almost incomprehensible closing nine of 43 and a round of 79.
Woods missed the cut by a massive eight shots, just his 6th missed cut in 255 starts on the PGA Tour. “I didn’t play well, and more importantly my short game wasn’t very good,” said Woods stating the obvious.
“I chipped and putted poorly, but for the most part I didn’t really hit the ball that poorly until the end when it was already pretty much out of reach.”
“I’m hitting the ball actually pretty decent, and I made three pretty bad mistakes around the greens that ended up costing me three shots. Going to the back nine, the 10th hurt a lot because I missed carrying the bunker by about a foot. It would have been perfect. Instead of walking away with 4, I walked away with 6, and that turned the whole round around.”
The question was asked how what he is going through is impacting on his golf.
“Well, I get asked every day. Every day I do media, I get asked it, so it doesn’t go away. Even when I’m at home, paparazzi still follow us, helicopters still hover around. Does it test you? Yes, of course it does. Is that any excuse? No, because I’m out there and I have the same opportunity as everybody else here in this field to shoot a good number and I didn’t do that.”
“I’ll go home and practice a little bit. It’ll be interesting because I’ll probably get home and hit balls on the range and I’m going to have to get up there to Ponte Vedra (next week’s Players Championship) a little early to putt because Isleworth is all torn up.”
Mayfair, a five time PGA Tour winner, has lost his full PGA Tour status and was forced to Monday qualify just to get a start in the event although there have been signs of improvement of late.
“I wouldn’t say surprised,” said Mayfair when asked about his form reversal. “I played well last week, I played real good on Saturday last week, shot 1-over on Sunday in the wind and all that, so I knew I was playing pretty good. If I was surprised at anything, it was shooting 65 on Monday. Like I said, just kept riding that wave and got here and just tried to keep my confidence going.”
Cabrera played with Woods and was able to put all the distractions aside and is one behind. “I’ve been working hard all year and been waiting for a round like this, and I haven’t broken 70 year, but this has just been my hard work coming into this tournament.”
Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and J.P Hayes share third position just one shot behind Cabrera.
Geoff Ogilvy is the best of the Australians in 9th position at 4 under while Robert Allenby and a very much improved Greg Chalmers are next in 14th position at 3 under.
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