PARAMUS, N.J. — It was still early in his round on Thursday, but Tiger Woods was already letting frustration show. He flung his club at his bag and held his hands on his hips while watching his ball trickle slowly, slowly, off the front edge of the dinner-table-narrow 12th green.
He needed 102 yards with his wedge but got only about 95 — the result, he would say later, of soft conditions at Ridgewood Country Club that left him with a choice of being dangerously aggressive or reluctantly defensive on several holes. It was an uncomfortable decision that seemed to hamstring his accuracy.