ST. LOUIS — Tiger Woods salvaged a horrible start to his PGA Championship by going 3-under over the final 16 holes to scratch out an even-par round of 70 on Thursday. Woods got back to even par on his 17th hole of the day, the par-5 eighth. Woods was able to drain a birdie putt after chipping out of a greenside bunker. It was his third birdie putt of the day and his second on his back nine. Woods bogeyed his first hole and doubled his second, putting him 3-over after just two holes. As Woods walked to the fairway of the third hole he changed into another dark blue Nike pullover. “That shirt is not working,” Woods’ caddy remarked to playing partner Justin Thomas as Woods had slipped behind a partition to change. Woods double-bogeyed No. 11 Thursday was Woods’ first competitive round at Bellerive Country Club and his first-ever competitive round in the city of St. Louis. Until this weekend’s PGA Championship, Woods’ closest association with the course and the area had been a practice round he played at the course on Sept. 11, 2001. Woods was in town for a golf clinic and played with Mark Calcavecchia on the morning of the attacks. With air travel suspended in the following days, Woods drove home from St. Louis to Florida. “I drove home on the 13th and 17 hours to get back home to Florida, and it was a very surreal time for myself on that drive and a lot of reflecting,” Woods said Tuesday. Surreal might be a good word to describe Woods’ first two holes on Thursday. He bogeyed the first hole when he was forced to punch out of the rough following an errant drive. His iron shot off the tee at the par-3 11th hole (Woods started on the back nine) went into the left rough and Woods had what looked to be a relatively straightforward approach shot over a pond and up onto the green. But Woods didn’t catch his second shot cleanly at all. The ball started its descent way before the green and bounced off the rock wall in front and plopped into the water. Story continues A drop and a missed bogey putt later, Woods was more strokes over par than holes played. “Grind my way around this place,” Woods said after his round. “Tried to stay as patient as possible. I got off to a terrible start and just tried to hang in there and just kind of eat away at it.” Fan cheer for Tiger Woods as he walks to the 15th tee during a practice round for the PGA Championship golf tournament at Bellerive Country Club, Wednesday, Aug. 8, 2018, in St. Louis. (AP) Woods gets two strokes back on his back nine Traversing the course was an adventure anywhere near where Woods was playing. At 42 and on a five-year winless streak he’s still the most magnetic golfer on the PGA Tour. Especially for many in attendance who have never seen Woods play in person. He was grouped with Justin Thomas, the winner of last week’s WGC event at Firestone and the defending PGA Championship winner, and two-time PGA champion Rory McIlroy. With Woods hearing a “Go Tiger” with nearly every step he took and Thomas hearing “Roll Tide” on a seemingly endless loop — after all, Missouri is SEC country now — McIlroy might have been in the unique position of playing the popularity third fiddle. As Thomas sprinted out with a 3-under front nine, McIlroy settled and settled for pars. He posted nine straight pars before bogeying his 10th hole. He birdied two holes and entered his final hole at 1-under before a wayward drive set up a bogey on the final hole. Thomas’ front-nine performance briefly put him tied atop the leaderboard with Rickie Fowler. But Thomas struggled on the back nine, dropping two shots and also bogeying the final hole after burying his drive in a bunker. Woods’ shirt change produced immediate, if not-long lasting, dividends. Woods’ second shot on his third hole — his first with the fresh shirt — was within spitting distance of the pin. He knocked in the putt for birdie and quickly got back to 2-over par. But he made it clear after the round that he wasn’t changing shirts because of the bad start. His typical routine of putting on a new shirt before his tee time was thwarted, so he started his round with a sweat-soaked shirt. “Normally I change before the round,” Woods said. “There wasn’t a place to change on the 10th tee. So I waited until we had a little port-a-john there.” A bogey on No. 7 briefly got him back to 3-over par but consecutive birdies at his ninth and 10th holes (Nos. 18 and 1) gave Woods a lift. He was noticeably more relaxed over the back nine after stringing together two good holes. “If I didn’t get off to such a bad start I played well enough to put myself under par,” Woods said. While that statement is true about Thursday, the general theme is also applicable to Woods’ recent performances. He played well enough to have a shot at the British Open in July. But Woods posted consecutive holes of … you guessed it … bogey and double bogey to put himself out of contention at the Open just as soon as he was in it. At Firestone a week ago, Woods entered the third round at 6-under par. A run of three bogeys in four holes on Saturday took him out of contention and he faded to an even-par finish after a bogey-double bogey sequence late in his round. Maybe Woods just got his bad streak out of the way on Thursday morning and he’s set to make a charge over the final three rounds. Or maybe we should all get used to this new normal of Tiger Woods. With each passing round like Thursday, the latter scenario becomes more realistic. – – – – – – – Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports. More from Yahoo Sports: • Dan Wetzel: Don’t let NCAA fool you with its rule changes • LeBron shows off Lakers uniform while giving Kobe a shoe shoutout • Ump pulls giant bug out of ear during MLB game • Terez Paylor: Bears bring ‘fun-n-gun’ offense to NFL<doc-sep>ST. LOUIS -- Tiger Woods shot an even-par 70 in the first round of the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive, and nobody really knows how he did it. Woods started on the 10th hole and shot a somewhat miraculous 2-over 37 on the back nine of the course (more on that in a minute). He followed that with a solid 33 on the front nine for the level 70. Woods' first few holes were as wayward as he's been all season. His distances were off. He was crooked off the tee. He was short when he should have been long. He honestly looked lost. After playing his first two holes in 3 over including a water ball, Woods stepped into a portable bathroom and changed shirts. I'm still not sure if that's because he'd already soaked through the other one or because he was trying to get the stench of a bogey-double bogey start off of himself. Whatever it was, it actually seemed to momentarily work. Playing partner Rory McIlroy fixed the back of Woods' collar, and Woods hit two terrific shots following the wardrobe change, made a birdie and made just one bogey the rest of the day. It wasn't without stress, though. Woods played the par-4 15th in about the most Tiger way possible. A badly yanked drive led to a second shot off a tree, which left him 68 yards to the hole. Woods took on a front pin, got it to climb over the front edge and somehow saved par. It was a microcosm of his day. He scored, and you weren't exactly sure how or why he was scoring based on how he was striking the golf ball. I walked the first nine with Woods, McIlroy and Justin Thomas, and if you would have told me at any point that McIlroy, who was murdering right-to-left drives and pulling the string with his short irons, would not have shot better than Woods, I would bet (and lost) my plane ticket home. They both shot 70. "Just hung in there," said Woods. "I was trying to grind away at it, pick away at it, and trying to get to maybe 1 over par at the turn and ended up being 2 where it was. Just trying to chip away at it. A par 5 and a couple short par 4s on the front nine. Just keep hanging in there." Woods made birdie at the 18th hole (his ninth of the day), which seemed to jump start his close. He went on to make two more birdies and get in the clubhouse five back of leader Rickie Fowler after the morning wave finished up. It's not premium position, but considering how badly he was flailing early, it probably feels like he's leading! Woods has a long way to go to just make the cut, but Thursday was a win after he finished 73-73 last weekend at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. It might not result in an actual win, but Tiger did what he does maybe better than anyone in golf history and summoned a preternatural grind that resulted in a halfway decent score. "I could have easily gone the other way, being 3 over through two," said Woods. "A lot of things could happen. Not a lot of them were positive, but I hung in there and turned it around." At one point on that 15th hole -- the one with the miracle par -- Woods grabbed at his bag as loads of fans held their phones over their heads and grinned like the Budweiser had already hit hard. From far away up by the green, I couldn't see what he was grasping at, but then he held up a large white towel and dried himself off. A marshal behind me told a fan, "See the towel. He's the one waving the towel." The metaphor was almost too easy. At the time it felt more like a white flag. I already had the article written in my head! Nobody would have blamed him if it was after the terrific season he's had. At 3 over through two holes and a miserably hot St. Louis day ahead of him, the eject button would have been easy to hit. I briefly forgot, though, this is Tiger Woods. He would play the rest of his round in 2 under. There are no white flags. There's only the next shot.<doc-sep>ST. LOUIS – Tiger Woods was 3 over par through two holes at the 100th PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club on Thursday, but battled back to shoot an even-par 70. He was five behind the early first-round leader, Rickie Fowler, and feeling good about turning a potentially terrible day into a not-so-bad one. “It kept me in the golf tournament,” said Woods, who started on the back nine. “I could have easily gone the other way, being 3 over through two. A lot of things could happen. Not a lot of them were positive, but I hung in there and turned it around.” After being sidelined for years by various ailments, including four back surgeries, Woods is in the midst of a comeback season that has seen plenty of highs. At the Valspar Championship in just his fourth start this season, he shot four under-par rounds for the first time since THE NORTHERN TRUST in 2013. At The Open Championship at Carnoustie last month, he briefly seized the lead before struggling on the back nine and ultimately finishing T6. The top-10 finish nudged him into the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking and got him into last week’s World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone South, where he’d won eight times. He got into contention but shot 73-73 on the weekend to finish T31. Woods was not at his best again at Bellerive on Thursday. Of his 118-yard approach over water at the 11th hole, he said, “I stuck it in the ground,” coming up some 12 yards short on the way to a double-bogey 6. Still, he minimized the damage by making three birdies and no bogeys over his last 10 holes. He hit 9 of 14 fairways and 11 of 18 greens, and took 27 putts. “This is a long run,” he said, pleased to still be within five of the early first-round leader, Rickie Fowler. “These are marathons. These are four long days. They're slow rounds.” Woods had the same score as playing partner Rory McIlroy (70) and was one behind the third member of the group, Justin Thomas (69), the defending PGA champion who is coming off a victory at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational last weekend. Being grouped with two stars from the next wave had Woods in a reflective mind, and he recounted a story about playing with Jack Nicklaus at the 2000 PGA at Valhalla, which he had told at the PGA Champions Dinner here earlier this week. “Jack at Valhalla, 18 years ago, that was his last PGA, and he was telling me the story that he played with Gene Sarazen in his last PGA,” Woods said. “It's interesting what this game of golf can do, how we can basically last for so many different generations. “… The reason I was telling the story is because J.T. invited me to speak a little on behalf of himself and PGA of America, and J.T. was 7-years old when we were at Valhalla, and he was in the clubhouse when I made that putt on 18. So, kind of trying to tie in Gene Sarazen, Jack, and little J.T. there, and now he's PGA champion for the last year, 17 years later. So, it's pretty neat.”<doc-sep>
ST. LOUIS — Yearning Missouri sports fans finally got to see Tiger Woods. And did the masses ever get their money’s worth as a tale of two Tigers played out Thursday on the grand stage that is Bellerive Country Club in the first round of the 100th PGA Championship. Under bright skies, he was mediocre at times, spectacular at other times. He had little control of his golf ball, then was in total charge of it. He was down, then up. Scowling then smiling. It was Jekyll and Hyde in nature. When he departed the green theater after a five-hour performance, he was back where he started, at even-par but once again thinking he could win his 15th major and fifth Wanamaker Trophy. “Just happy to be within five right now,” Woods said after he signed for a 70. At the time he trailed early pace-setter Rickie Fowler by five shots. Gary Woodland shot a 64 in the afternoon wave to lead by six shots. He had every right to be happy, for his start needed a rewrite. Shortly after the curtain opened at 8:23 a.m. local time, fans started to wonder what all the fuss was about, why their thirst to see the best player of his generation up close for the first time had been so pitched. More:Tiger Tracker: Follow Tiger Woods' Thursday round shot-by-shot More:Tiger Woods puts Ryder Cup captain in potentially 'awkward' position More:Inspired by his friend Jarrod Lyle, Rickie Fowler shoots 65 at PGA Many must have wondered if Tiger was using a stand-in, as he sprayed the ball all over the big ballpark. He found the rough with his first tee shot on the 10th hole and made bogey, then stuck a sand wedge into the ground from 118 yards on his second shot on the 11th hole and saw it wind up 20 yards short of his target and in the water. Double bogey. Two holes in and Woods was 3 over. But after Tiger changed his stripes with a switch of shirts just past the 12th tee, necessitated not to alter the mojo but because, as he said, “I sweat a lot,” Woods made birdie from two feet. But then he had an adventure in the woods on the 15th but managed to save par, then bogeyed the 16th with a miserable tee shot. He came up short with a sand wedge again on the 17th and was forced to scramble for par. He should have been 5 over, not 3 over. Thankfully for Tiger, that ended the first act where he hit the fairway in regulation just two of six times, hit just three of eight greens. Those were like his early-season numbers when he wasn’t quite back to full speed. But starting on the 18th, Tiger became the A-list star the fans wanted to see. After a fairway-splitting drive, he stuck a 7-iron to 4 feet and made birdie, then bounded to the first tee with his first sign of energy all day. “It was nice to kind of turn the tide going into the back nine with that birdie,” Woods said. The tide continued to roll on the front nine as Woods added two birdies and missed several good chances for more red numbers. After being so erratic off the tee, he found the fairway seven of his last eight attempts, found the green eight of his last 10 approaches. After a 37 on his opening nine, he came home with a 33. “It kept me in the golf tournament,” Woods said of his last 10 holes. “I could have easily gone the other way, being 3 over through two. A lot of things could happen. Not a lot of them were positive, but I hung in there and turned it around. I was able to grind out a score today.” Woods has grinded often in his return to professional golf following spinal fusion surgery. In many ways, it’s the best thing he’s done during his comeback that has included six top-12 finishes in 13 starts. But Woods is hoping for a smoother act in the second round, when he again joins Justin Thomas and Rory McIlroy beginning at 1:48 p.m. CT Friday. The crowds will be massive again. What Tiger will they see?