Woods rallies after nightmare start

“It was frustrating I got off to a bad start like that but I had to focus and I had 17 more holes to get it back,” he said.

“It was a tough round of golf to try and always fight back but I kept my patience and I really grinded my way around this golf course.” Garcia also posted a 73 and Donald a 76. Woods, dressed in black, never looked entirely at ease, repeatedly leaking his drives to the right as he finished five shots behind early leader Hennie Otto of South Africa. “I hit some bad drives,” he said. “But I also hit some really good ones that landed in the middle of the fairway and landed in the rough.

“These fairways are tough to hit but I have to say the majority of drives I hit today weren’t very good ones.”

Woods, seeking his ninth Major championship, could not have made a worse start, suffering the embarrassment of having to return to the tee in a buggy after his opening drive ended up in thick rough on the right of the fairway.

Despite the frantic efforts of players, caddies, officials and spectators, the ball could not be located and Woods was forced to try again. “It was a little disconcerting,” he said. “The forecaddies were all telling us where the ball was but unfortunately we couldn’t find it.”

His second tee shot landed close to the first and Woods hooked his second from a poor lie to the Left of the green before failing to get down in two.

Woods pulled a shot back with a birdie at the par-five fourth hole but he was in trouble again at the seventh, where his drive found dense rough. The 27-year-old went for the green with his second shot but uttered an anguished cry of “get out of there” as the ball headed for one of the course’s fiendish bunkers.(Reuters)