When Tiger Woods hit his opening tee shot in the water at the 10th to start the Zozo Championship, it certainly was not an ideal beginning.
That led to a bogey, and when he snapped his tee shot on the second hole (the 11th at the Narashino Country Club) into the trees that spit it out into a fairway bunker, he was forced to lay up. A second bogey.
Finally, Woods hit the green at his third hole — then three-putted.
Disaster.
Three straight bogeys to begin his first tournament in nine weeks coming off knee surgery amid considerable doubt about his game suggested it was going to be a long week in Japan.
It turned out to be an amazing week in the career of Tiger Woods.
He rebounded from that start to get the 82nd PGA Tour win of his career, matching the record held by Sam Snead.
But from a stats perspective, bouncing back from three straight bogeys to win the tournament might be every bit as historic.
The PGA Tour can find no instance of that ever having happened, going back to the start of such record-keeping in 1983.
And in the ShotLink computer statistical era, which dates to 2003, the PGA Tour found some interesting things about players who started a tournament with three straight holes over par.
800: Number of times players started an opening round with three straight holes over par since 2003.
76.2: The opening-round stroke average of those 800 players. Woods shot 64, bettering the average by 12.2 strokes.
92%: Percentage of time players finish their round over par.
5%: Percentage of time players finish their round under par.
109th: Average tournament position after the opening round. Woods was tied for first.
6: Number of players out of 800 who finished their opening round inside the top 10.
9.2: Average number of holes needed to get back to even par or better after starting with three consecutive holes over par, of those who finished even par or better. Woods needed four holes to get back to even.
2.4: Average number of birdies made in the opening round out of 800. Woods made nine birdies, which is tied for the most and is 6.6 more than average.
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Tiger Woods makes a putt on the 18th green to finish off his 82nd career PGA Tour win, tying him with Sam Snead for most all time.
16: Number of players out of 800 who finished inside the top 10 at the end of the week.
1: Tiger Woods is the only player to win.
It’s also worth noting …
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The average first-round position after opening with three holes over par is 109th. The next best to Woods is Steve Stricker, who tied for second after his first round that started poorly at the 2006 U.S. Open.
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Only 23% of the players went on to make the cut.
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Cameron Smith had a 66 after opening with three straight scores over par at the 2016 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, the next-best score to Woods’ 64.
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Smith and Brendan Steele at the 2013 Shriners are the only other players along with Woods to make nine birdies after the poor start.
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Woods and Stricker at the 2006 U.S. Open are the only players to get to the top of the leaderboard through 36 holes after a three-bogey-or-worse start.