Unlucky break halts Tiger Woods' rise to top of leaderboard

Every now and then, Tiger Woods is too good for his own good.

Cruising toward a seemingly inevitable 36-hole lead at the midway mark of the Masters Tournament, Woods’ perfect approach to the 15th hole clattered off the base of the flagstick and bounded into the pond.

“Evidently, it was a really good one,” said Woods of the unlucky shot that turned a probable birdie into a bogey and dropped him out of a share of the lead. He finished with 71 after a three-putt bogey on 18, sitting tied for seventh.

“My ball striking was so good today,” Woods added. “Even my misses were on top of flags. … I really swung the club well and didn’t really get a lot out of this round. Granted, these conditions were tough. It was swirling all over the place.”

A day after giving himself few birdie chances with his approach shots in benign conditions, Woods started charging up the leaderboard with birdies at 5, 7 and 8 that got him to 5-under and tied for the lead at the turn.

With two par-5s on the back side, his chances to seize control of the tournament he hasn’t won since 2005 looked strong.

But after having to lay up on 13 and missing a 15-footer for birdie, Woods got the unluckiest of breaks on 15. He laid up to 87 yards and hit a 60-degree wedge into the green that looked as good as it could until the sickening sound of ball on metal told him all was not well.

Woods then took a drop behind his original divot and stuck his second attempt less than 3 feet left of the hole to save bogey.

“I went down to the drop area, that wasn’t going to be a good spot, because obviously it’s into the grain and it was a little bit wet,” he said.

“So it was muddy and not a good spot to drop. So I went back to where I played it from, but I went two yards farther back and I tried to take two yards off the shot of what I felt I hit. That should land me short of the flag and not have it either hit the flag or skip over the back. … It worked out perfectly.”

Woods, however, couldn’t make birdie putts on 16 or 17, and then his approach into 18 carried to the top tier on the green and left him a wicked, downhill, sweeping breaker from 40 feet that rolled 10 feet past the cup. He missed the comebacker for his first three-putt of the tournament.

“The shot at 18 was flagged,” he said.

But Woods accentuated the positives instead of cursing his luck.

“Oh, we all could have been doing that,” he said. “But there’s a long way to go. We got 36 holes and this is a tricky test.”

In Woods’ four victories at the Masters, he’s sat in first (1997), second (2001), third (2005) and fourth (2002) place after 36 holes. But he’s never won the Masters or any of his 14 majors without owning at least a share of the lead heading into the final round.