Woods’ game goes North

LA JOLLA -- The new season is taking on an uncanny resemblance to the old one, if you can take anything from Tiger Woods’ first two rounds of 2008.

Officially, Woods shot a seven-under-par 65 Friday on the Torrey Pines North Course in the second round of the Buick Invitational, putting him at 12-under 132.

Unofficially, his four-shot lead seems a lot bigger than that.

As usual, Woods is playing it cool.

“They’re not handing out the trophy today,” he said.

No, that’ll come Sunday, or maybe even Monday, depending on how the rain that’s on its way affects play. Chances are good that the trophy, when it is handed out, will be filled with rainwater, and probably just as good that Woods will be holding it.

Of course, there’s still a long way to go, which is a feeling well known by the player closest to Woods, 31-year-old Kevin Streelman of Winfield, Ill.

The qualifying school graduate, a former mini-tour regular who survived the Hooters Tour and the Gateway Tour and was the last alternate into the Buick field, shot a three-under 69 on the South Course. That put him four shots behind Woods at eight-under 136.

Woods doesn’t know Streelman, who is ranked 1,114th, but he has figured out something about his ranking.

“I think he might be going up,” Woods said.

Streelman’s greatest accomplishment to date, besides finding out on the putting green Thursday that he was in the field four minutes before his tee time, might have been winning $25,000 last year in a made-for-TV event called “The Ultimate Game.”

It’s a long journey from the mini-tours to the last pairing with Woods in today’s third round.

“Pitfalls, and tremendous highs and lows, and in this game you lose more than you win, obviously,” Streelman said of his experiences, “especially when you’re scrounging money to get to the next tournament and to put gas in your car.”

Scrounging is not something Woods associates with money. Scooping it up into piles is more like it. Woods won five of his last six tournaments to end 2007, if you include his Target World Challenge, and has won at Torrey Pines the last three years.

He’s not ready to start counting on another one just yet, favoring the conservative approach. Stewart Cink’s 69 on the South Course enabled him to slip into third place, one shot ahead of Aaron Baddeley, Boo Weekley and Brad Adamonis.

“Chasing Tiger Woods is always the tallest task on the PGA Tour, so I get a chance to try again,” Cink said.

Weekley had a 66 on the South Course.

Phil Mickelson shot a one-over 73 and made the cut at one-under 143, but for the second time in three weeks, the PGA Tour’s new cut rule sent 19 players home who actually made the cut at one-over 145.

“I’ll look back and kind of assess where my game is at probably after Sunday’s round,” said Mickelson, who was sick last week and couldn’t get a lot of work in. “I’m not sharp right now.”

The so-called MDF rule -- Made Cut but Did Not Finish -- is new this year to keep the weekend play manageable, and is triggered when at least 78 players make the cut and the cut line is the low 70 players and ties. If the number of players making the cut reaches 78 -- there were 85 who made it Friday -- then the number of players is reduced to the closest number to 70.

In this case, it was 66 players at even par. Included in the MDF were Chris DiMarco, Kenny Perry, Anthony Kim, Lucas Glover, Vaughn Taylor and Nick Flanagan. Kim, who opened with a 68, shot 77 on the South.

The new rule would have eliminated Jose Maria Olazabal from the 2002 Buick, and he made the cut on the number and went on to win.

However, Olazabal made the cut at eight shots behind co-leaders J.L. Lewis and Kent Jones, and the MDF casualties this time were 13 shots behind Woods.

Woods wasn’t too sympathetic to anyone bitten by the MDF rule.

“Very simple, play better,” he said.

Even though he’s at 12 under, Woods said he’s far from satisfied with his game. For one thing, he could drive it better.

Woods hit six of 14 fairways Friday, after hitting seven on Thursday. But he did have seven birdies without a bogey, chipped in once for par and expects to hit it even better pretty soon, maybe today.

“I drove it like a dog yesterday,” he said. “But today I started the ball on line, over-shaped them, but that’s OK. I can face that.”

Whatever shape his game may be in, Woods has still managed to score. And playing well enough to do that, right from the start, is quite an accomplishment, said Charles Howell III.

“I don’t think he surprises anybody anymore,” Howell said. “To play at his level, consistently, it is amazing. He doesn’t seem to have the dips in his career and dips in his year that a lot of the top guys have. It just doesn’t happen with Tiger.”

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thomas.bonk@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Leaders

Second-round leaders at the Buick Invitational:

*--* Tiger Woods 67-65--132 -12 Kevin Streelman 67-69--136 -8 Stewart Cink 68-69--137 -7 Aaron Baddeley 71-67--138 -6 Boo Weekley 72-66--138 -6 Brad Adamonis 66-72--138 -6 Stuart Appleby 67-72--139 -5 John Senden 70-69--139 -5 *--*

* Complete scoreboard, D10

Source: Associated Press