Tiger Woods misses hole-in-one by inches in his first PGA Tour start in a year

A quiet comeback round jolted to life with this shot at the 16th hole of the Farmers Insurance open.

Tiger Woods’ first round on the PGA Tour in a year has been a relatively uneventful march around Torrey Pines. That’s about in line with expectations, both for the player and the course at this stage of their careers. Torrey’s South Course generally leads to boring golf, a slog through long and narrow fairways surrounded by high rough. It’s as beautiful and picturesque a setting on the PGA Tour, but the modern iteration under the Rees Jones redesign doesn’t inspire much exciting golf -- both good and bad.

And then there’s Tiger, who has not really played consistent PGA Tour golf since the end of 2015. Last year’s “comeback” was hardly that, lasting only two rounds at this Farmers Insurance Open. So we expected rust, not some stripe show that yielded a mid-60s rounds. His driving is a little erratic — it appears he refuses to draw the ball right now, taking everything left-to-right. But his irons looked particularly spotty through the front nine. There have been few highlights but it’s not some disconcerting mess like his showing last year at this event.

Then we got the the 16th hole, and Woods ignited the grounds at Torrey with this dart dropped on top of the flag. It was the kinda of highlight we were waiting for all day.

That’s a shot from about 190 yards, taken out over the left side again, and put to 8 inches from the cup. Woods would tap the birdie in to get back to even-par. It’s not the most electric round, but that is a strong cap to put near the end of it.