No Happy Troon for Woods in Final Round

After spending a large portion of his time Sunday at Royal Troon ankle deep in grass or on the green watching his golf ball stay out of the hole, Tiger Woods knew his fourth round wasn’t going to be anything like his third round.

He was right. Woods had a course record-tying 64 Saturday, but slashed his way to a 74 in the final round to finish at even-par 284.

Woods tied for 24th, his worst finish in a major this year, after his victory at the Masters and a tie for 19th at the U.S. Open.

It wasn’t all that bad a week, he said. “Overall, it was a good experience. To win today, I felt I had to shoot a round like yesterday, but I had to get off to a good start. It didn’t happen.”

Woods birdied No. 4 and No. 5 and had chances on the next two holes, but he missed an eight-footer at No. 6 and a three-footer at No. 7.

“If I had made those two putts, I might have got it going. I never got any putts at all.”

Then there was his experience at No. 8, the 126-yard “Postage Stamp.” Woods drove his nine iron into a bunker and the ball was buried. He blasted out, but the ball rolled right back in.

Woods blasted out again and three-putted for a triple-bogey six.

“I knew I couldn’t win then,” he said. “But if I had sunk those putts at the sixth and seventh, it might have been a different story.”

And it also may have been a different story if Woods he had played a couple of holes very much differently--like the triple-bogey he took on No. 10 in the first round and the quadruple bogey he took on No. 11 in the second round.

“The week wasn’t bad, but I had three bad holes and you can’t afford to do that in a major. You can’t let it happen.”