Tiger Woods shoots 73 in return to competitive golf

There were plenty of things to critique in Tiger Woods’ return to competitive golf with a round of 1-over-par 73, but his short game was not something to complain about.

“It’s my strength again,” Woods said. “That’s why I’ve busted my butt. That’s why I took time off. That’s why I hit thousands and thousands of shots to make sure that it’s back to being my strength. And it did. I tried to hole most of them, that’s the thing.”

Woods had other things to figure out in a late-afternoon round that left him tied for 41st and nine shots behind leader Jordan Spieth.

He three-putted the first hole, failed to save par from the bunker on No. 4, played the ninth hole from the middle of the first fairway and hit his tee shot into Rae’s Creek on the 12th hole to accumulate his four bogeys on the day. He offset that with three birdies on the par-5s, each of them set up by brilliant wedges including a tough up and down from the perilous swale behind the 13th green.

Despite hitting 10 of 14 fairways and 11 greens with a 261-yard driving average that ranked 92nd in the 97-man field, Woods often found himself scrambling from unusual places and employing a wide range of lashing swings and intriguing body language.

He made birdie on No. 2 after his ball clipped a tree and fell nearly 100 yards short of his playing partners. He saved par on No. 7 with a daring shot from the left trees. He settled for par on No. 15 from the trees on the right.

The rust from having not played since withdrawing after 11 holes at Torrey Pines on Feb. 5 didn’t have him overly concerned.

“I felt good,” Woods said. “I felt like I hit the ball well enough to shoot 3-under par. Our entire group was really struggling at the greens. We were talking about how slow they were today. We had a hard time hitting the putts hard enough. You’ve got to give respect to the downhill putts, but they weren’t rolling out.”

His ninth hole was a mess, playing from the adjacent first fairway and then having to save a bogey after his second shot got snagged in the trees.

“I played the wrong shot,” he said of his errant drive. “I was trying to turn it down there and I really shouldn’t have turned it down there. The hole is playing short. It’s hot. The ball is flying. It’s not that hard to hit the ball 300, 320 out here in this heat. And I hit the wrong shot. And then on top of that the next one I hit the wrong shot again. I tried to put the ball in the bunker when I probably should have put the ball short right of the bunker and pitched up.”

Woods has broken 70 only once in 20 Masters starts, and his 73 is one shot better than how he began his most recent Mas­ters victory in 2005. So he isn’t ruling himself out in spite of the 40 players in front of him.

“You know, I’m still in it,” he said. “I’m only nine back. And we have a long way to go. And we don’t know what the Masters is going to do, what they’re going to do with the greens or the golf course. You know how they like to change things every now and then.”

Woods will tee off at 10:30 a.m. in the second round.

“We’ll see what it’s like tomorrow morning,” he said. “From what I saw early on this morning, before I went out, a lot of guys were getting it early. And we figured somebody would probably get to 6 (under), and Jordan got to 8. So that’s about right. The wind picked up but the greens still had enough moisture on them that the balls were holding. They weren’t getting away from us.”