Tiger Woods added to his golf legend with a dominating performance during his fourth consecutive Buick Invitational victory at La Jolla’s Torrey Pines Golf Course Sunday, Jan 27.
Woods has won five of the last six PGA tournaments at Torrey Pines and six since 1999, even while the course has been significantly remodeled to be more difficult.
Woods led all four days of the tournament while shooting a 67, 65, 66 and 71 for an 8-shot margin over Ryuji Imada, Rory Sabbatini and Stewart Cink.
“Even though I didn’t drive the ball particularly well this week, I still was able to do what I was able to do, which was nice,” Woods said.
What he did do was shoot 19 under par. At one point he was 21 under. But late Sunday the weather affected everyone’s game while the wind was gusting around 25 miles per hour and it finally began to rain again.
Only seven players finished the final round under par. Woods’ 71 was his first above the 60s in 14 rounds of tournament play.
“It wasn’t easy today. It was breezy and cold,” Woods added. “The wind changed a lot ” it was impossible to get close sometimes.”
Woods hit fewer than half of the fairways in his first event of the season, but his short game and putting was spectacular. Huge putts found the cup for Woods while other players’ readings of the greens were less perfect. On the 11th, Woods looped a putt more than 60 feet, curling 30 feet off-line and finding its way into the back of the cup.
Woods was 59th in driving accuracy but No. 1 in putts per round and birdies.
The victory was the 62nd in Woods’ 11 years on tour, tied with the great Arnold Palmer at No. 4 on the career PGA victories list. But he has accomplished the feat in less than half the time than the other champions on the list, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Sam Sneed.
Native San Diego favorite Phil Mickelson finished Sunday in sixth behind veteran Justin Leonard. Mickelson also made his 2008 debut at Torrey Pines, where he has twice been champion. But he was battling a stomach virus as well as the elements on the bluffs of La Jolla.
Rounding out the top 10 were Joe Durant at 6 under par and John Senden, Fred Couples and Stewart Appleby tied at 5 under.
The Torrey Pines South course has been made extremely difficult in preparation for hosting the 2008 US Open on June 12. The prestigious Open event will be hosted on a municipal course for only the second time in tour history.
The San Diego Century Club hosted the Buick Invitational. Local youth programs were also big winners due to the efforts and generosity of the Century Club and hundreds of tournament volunteers.
The PGA Tour moves on to Scottsdale, where large crowds are expected, up to 200,000 per day on the weekend. Then the tour moves back to Pebble Beach followed by the Riveria Country Club near Santa Monica.
Woods, however, will be traveling to the Dubai Desert Classic in the Middle East.
Tournament information is available at www.buickinvitational.com and www.PGATour.com.
