Tiger finds himself 7 shots back
AUGUSTA, Ga. — Trevor Immelman knows he'll be nervous this weekend, though he's been through something a lot more stressful than leading the Masters.
Tiger Woods knows he'll need a comeback of historic proportions to get started on something grand, though it takes a lot more to shake him up than a seven-stroke deficit.
Immelman, who was laid up in a hospital bed four months ago, shot his second straight 68 on Friday for an 8-under total. That he's even playing at all is a wonder.
The South African came down with a stomach parasite during last year's Masters, lost 20 pounds, and needed a month to recover. But the real scare came in December, when Immelman felt a severe pain around his rib cage and struggled to breathe. Doctors removed a golf ball-sized tumor that turned out to be benign.
"It definitely made me realize that golf wasn't my whole life," said Immelman, who holds a one-stroke lead over Brandt Snedeker.
The question now is how he'll hold up over the final two rounds when he's never finished higher than fifth in a major.
"You definitely feel pressure," Immelman said, "but I feel pressure playing for a hundred bucks against a mate. That's the beauty of the game. The thing is, you've just got to go out there and play as well as you can play. And the other thing you've got to realize is the best players in the world get nervous and feel pressure."
Talk about pressure: Woods, who had proclaimed the Grand Slam "easily within reason," will need the second-greatest 36-hole rally in Masters history to keep his quest going beyond the opening major.
Even Augusta patrons, who usually tag along with Woods by the thousands, started to drift away by the time he got to the 17th hole. The bleachers were scattered with open seats as he sank a birdie putt that kept his fading hopes alive.
Woods, of course, was undeterred by his predicament.
"I'm in good shape," said Woods, who will need a comeback eclipsed only by Jackie Burke's rally from an eight-shot deficit in 1956, and that was aided by Ken Venturi's collapse on the weekend. "Stay patient. This golf course, you can make up shots here quickly. I've just got to hang in there."
Woods hardly looked like the world's greatest player when he yanked his final tee shot into the pine trees on the left side of 18. He lined his next shot into the fairway — the adjacent 10th fairway — but recovered nicely, hitting a sand wedge that might have spun right up the hole if it hadn't hit Stuart Appleby's ball.
Even so, Woods sank the 8-foot par putt for a 1-under 71 and gave himself a bit of a boost heading into Saturday, when the warm, sunny conditions that prevailed the first two days are expected to give way to cooler temperatures and possible showers.
"It was nice to end up under par for the day and under par for the tournament," he said. "Seven back on this golf course, under these conditions we're going to have coming up, you can make that up."
Phil Mickelson doesn't have nearly so large a gap to close.
Trying to win his third green jacket in five years, Lefty shot a 68 that left him just three strokes behind Immelman, and it would have been even closer if not for a 4-foot birdie miss at No. 15. Of course, Mickelson did roll in a 30-footer at 17 to make up for his gaffe.
"I'm always looking to see what the leaders are doing," he said. "You want to stay close. You don't want to make any big mistakes and get way out."
That's what happened to defending champion Zach Johnson and Justin Rose, who shared the first-round lead with Immelman.
The 2007 winner struggled to a 76 that included a double-bogey at the next-to-last hole, leaving him with little hope of grabbing another green jacket. Johnson is now 10 shots off the lead.
So is Rose. The lowlight of another fade by the Englishman — who always seems to lead after the first round at Augusta, but never beyond — was a snowman at the 15th. He laid up and still managed to knock his ball in the water, then nearly put two more in the drink before getting down for a triple-bogey 8.
