Tiger Woods posts lowest opening round in 19 years to lead the BMW Championship

Tiger put us on #59Watch on Thursday in the latest display of this remarkable comeback season.

Tiger Woods opened the BMW Championship with his lowest first round score on the PGA Tour since 1999. Given where we were a year ago at this time, when Tiger was just cleared to do some light chipping and putting, it’s still hard to comprehend that we’re watching this again. I’m fairly certain that’s a sentence I’ve wrote in March and April and May and June and July and August and now in September. Just because we’re nearing the end of a full season in which we’ve seen Tiger stay healthy and play competitive golf doesn’t mean we’re outside the blast radius of being completely in awe of this comeback.

Thursday’s 62 at Aronimink put Tiger on top of the leaderboard for the day, with Rory McIlroy making a late push to overtake him with his own run at breaking 60. Tiger put us on #59Watch before lunch, when he started 5-under through his first seven holes and went out in 29. That came on, technically, the harder nine-hole stretch so breaking 60 was absolutely in play. The blow-by-blow of his opening 9:

The putter, his old Scotty Cameron, the one that he used for 13 of his 14 majors and he put back in the bag this week, was rolling early and then the ballstriking took over. That’s the thing that has carried him all year and made him so competitive right away after a couple years out of the game.

An eagle at the par-5 16th, just a complete laser that went from 240 yards to 5 feet, ignited the front nine charge and took the mania up a notch about just how low this could go. Whether it’s with wedges or mid-irons from 200-plus yards away, Tiger has been arguably the best ballstriker in the world this year. If not the best, then he’s certainly among a handful of the best on Tour. This still feels incomprehensible given where we were!

Tiger was +3.12 in strokes gained approach. That’s a stout number. But he was also +2.17 SG-putting, an area that’s been wildly inconsistent for much of the summer. That’s the reason he’s bounced around using different putter models, casting out the Scotty for a couple different TaylorMade models, including a mallet, before returning back to the Scotty this week.

Woods would cool down a bit on his back nine, the easier nine, but he didn’t exactly come back to the pack. The 2-under 35 featured a couple more wedges stuffed on top of flagsticks and one more lengthy birdie putt at the 18th for the 62.

Who knows if Tiger stays on top of the leaderboard for the next three days, but he’s certainly set himself up for another chance at his first win in five-plus years. The last time he shot 62 or lower came in that last win, a Friday 61 at the 2013 Bridgestone. A few things have happened to Tiger in those intervening five years.

That’s what makes watching some of the shotmaking that we saw on Thursday still feel so special and why we’ll probably lock in at the end of a long fatiguing season, and with football returning, for a tournament that’s not a major. The possibility for a 62, or a win, now exists when it felt certain that it never would again.