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The exception came on the 15th.
Woods pulled his iron into the rough, the ball nestled at the bottom of 18-inch grass that had been trampled by footsteps and cables. He tossed aside the cable and some television equipment and tried to hammer a wedge some 60 yards over a pot bunker he couldn't see.
It was an example of Woods saying earlier in the week that some spots at Royal Lytham were "unplayable." He had a shot, just not much of one.
This one didn't make it 60 yards. The grass grabbed the shaft the club and turned it, and the ball fluttered into the side of a hillock in even deeper rough. The top of the grass came up to Woods' knees as he waited for his caddie to get the yardage -- 118 yards to the front of the green, 137 yards to the hole.
Another miscue, and this could get ugly. But he hit that one onto the green, missing the pot bunker to the left, and hit a beautiful lag putt to escape with bogey.
"To carry it 80 yards, it's still ... people don't realize how deep some spots are," Woods said.
He managed to finish the round without further incident, and the report card looked like this: two drivers out of his 14 tee shots; all but one fairway; and four birdies, though none over the final 11 holes.
"I felt like I had pretty good control," Woods said. "I was shaping the golf ball both ways. Sometimes I rode the wind, sometimes I held it against it. But as I said, I was playing to my spots. I had certain sections I wanted to put the ball in, and I did that all day."
It was a solid start, and Woods will never complain about a 67, even on the slightly better half of the draw.
"I got off to a positive start today," Woods said. "We've got three more rounds. We've got a lot of golf to play."
[Associated
Press;
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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