It’s smooth-out time for Woods

Not long after dark Sunday night, about the time new Masters champion Zach Johnson was sitting down to dinner with the high-ranking members of Augusta National Golf Club, Tiger Woods had already hopped on his jet and flown home to Florida.

He was probably trying to digest how he’d spent his week in Augusta and couldn’t have been happy with the answers. Tiger-watchers will devote much of their post-Masters downloading to figuring out how long a tie for second place will linger.

Chances are, it won’t be for long. It’s a little more than two months until the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pa., and Woods probably will play three more times to get ready. He hasn’t made it official, but the Byron Nelson at Irving, Texas, may be the next tournament on his list in three weeks, then the Players Championship at Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and the Memorial at Dublin, Ohio.

That’s plenty of time for Woods to smooth out the rough edges that cost him at the Masters. Hank Haney, Woods’ swing coach, said Monday that Woods didn’t linger on bad news.

“There’s not much that doesn’t affect Tiger in a positive way,” he said. “He’ll work harder. He’ll be right back.”

Johnson was highly regarded -- he played on the Ryder Cup team in September -- but his record in majors was ordinary. He missed the cut in three of the four majors last year. Yet with three birdies in a four-hole stretch on the back nine Sunday, Johnson came through while Woods parred the last five holes.

What went wrong for Woods is no mystery. The standard method for losing at Augusta National is to make double bogeys and to three-putt. But Woods didn’t have any doubles and only one three-putt, Saturday at the 15th, where he saved par.

He didn’t even putt poorly -- 117 altogether, only 10 more than putting leader Padraig Harrington. And Woods tied for seventh in hitting greens in regulation.

Woods’ driving proved to be his most serious problem. He hit just over half the fairways, 31 of 56, and tied for 46th. Who tied for second? Johnson, who hit more than 80% of the fairways.

Haney said Woods hit the ball great in practice leading up to the Masters and that he drove it better on Sunday, only to be victimized by iron shots that got caught up in the swirling winds.

“Usually, when Tiger hits a bad shot, you know it right away,” Haney said. “But I’ve never seen him stand over a shot, stare it down, pose, and it turns out bad.”

That happened at the 17th on Sunday when Woods thought he’d hit it great, but the ball wound up in a bunker in front of the green. He saved par.

At the 17th in Saturday’s third round, Woods drove it left into the trees, then hit it over the trees and the ball landed in the left bunker. He made bogey. Wrong club, wrong distance, wind or poor execution?

It’s hard to tell, but it’s clear that Woods and caddie Steve Williams were not on the same page about irons and distance more than once. Woods stood over a number of iron shots and then backed off.

What’s more, Woods had an eagle but only one birdie Sunday.

It was only the fifth time as a pro that he had completed all four days of a major without a single round under par. The others were the 1997 PGA Championship, the 1998 U.S. Open, the 1999 British Open and the 2003 PGA Championship. He missed the cut last year at the U.S. Open.

Haney said Woods needed to make something happen on the greens Sunday and couldn’t. Woods agreed.

“You just had to keep plodding along, give yourself as many chances as you possibly could on birdies, because they’re very hard to come by,” Woods said.

The major calendar flips to June and Oakmont, where Ernie Els shot five under to win the 1994 U.S. Open. This summer’s version of the Open at Oakmont is destined to be more difficult -- 284 yards longer at 7,230 and par reduced by one shot to 70.

The way the course is being set up by Mike Davis of the USGA, it doesn’t appear to be the place for players to solve an untrustworthy swing. If it’s not solved before Oakmont, it’s not going to happen there.

“You come into Oakmont and if you’re not confident where the ball is going, or [in] your distance control, it’s going to be a long week,” Davis said Monday. “Actually, it will be a short week, because you’re going to miss the cut.”

Oakmont is not only tough, it also covers a lot of ground. For instance, the par-five 12th measures 667 yards, the longest par five in U.S. Open history. And the par-three eighth stretches to 288 yards, the longest par three in U.S. Open history.

The fairways will be only 22 to 28 yards wide, the rough will be kept at four inches around the greens, and the famous “church pews” bunkers are getting beefed up. On the left side of the third and fourth holes, they are longer, wider and deeper than they were in 1994. They’ve grown from eight feet to 12, and they cover 26,000 square feet, as opposed to the 15,000 in 1994. Instead of three feet deep, they’re going to be as deep as four feet in places.

At the 2003 U.S. Amateur, the last USGA Championship at Oakmont, the average score for the two days of stroke play was 79, and that’s before nearly 60 yards were added.

Of course, all this isn’t just Woods’ problem, it’s also the task facing Johnson, the new Masters champion, and 154 others in the field. But as Johnson showed Sunday at Augusta National, the end result might be improbable, but not impossible.

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The overnight Nielsen rating for Johnson’s victory in Sunday’s fourth round of the Masters on CBS was 9.1, up slightly from last year’s last round. It represented a 24.7% increase from the fourth-round rating of 7.3 in 2004, the last time the closing round was played on Easter. Saturday’s third round on CBS had a 6.1 overnight rating, up 19.6% from last year’s 5.2.

thomas.bonk@latimes.com