Tiger Woods' final round

Activity in the fan zone located to the left of the fairway on the mammoth par-5, 605-yard ninth hole at Aronimink Golf Club came to a standstill when Tiger Woods stepped up to the tee Sunday in the final round of the AT&T National.

It's good they were paying attention because Woods' drive was coming their way. The crowd scattered, then scrambled to see where the ball landed while roving marshals shooed them away and began to make a clearing. The ball came to a stop in front of a photo vendor on dirt packed so tightly it may as well have been concrete.

This was not exactly a Kodak moment for the world's greatest golfer.

"Oh my goodness. This is like Happy Gilmore," a woman from the gallery remarked.

Woods studied the shot. According to ShotLink, the pin was 270 yards away, and there was a tree on the left that had to be navigated. Tiger gripped a 2-iron and hit a shot he calls a "stinger." The ball seemed to be shot from a howitzer, a low line drive that hooked around the tree and ran onto the green, 75 feet short of the flag.

Dick Bailey's jaw dropped.

"I've been following Tiger from the beginning, and I have to think that's one of the three greatest shots he's ever made," said Bailey, an East Goshen resident who served as one of the roving marshals. "It's easily the best shot I've seen all week."

Woods finished the hole with an eight-foot birdie putt. Otherwise, Tiger's round was pretty much like the previous three in his first PGA Tour appearance in the Philly area: Ordinary.

He finished Sunday's round at 1-over 71 and the tourney at 4-over 284. He failed to break par in any of the four rounds, only the fourth time in his career he's done so in a non-major and the first time since the 1999 Arnold Palmer Invitational. The other two times were at the 1998 Players Championship and 1997 Westchester Classic.

As he'd done through the first three rounds, Woods continued to struggle with Aronimink's unforgiving greens. He was deadly with his driver, averaging 306 yards, and his short game was a little uneven. Still, he saw progress in his game as he prepares for the British Open in two weeks at his favorite venue - St. Andrews.

"I drove it really good this week," Woods said. "That was fun. I wanted to hit a driver every hole. I hadn't hit it that well in an extremely long time. Tee to green I felt great. My irons weren't as sharp as they need to be, but I did hit a lot of good iron shots. There are some I need to work on."

Aronimink was his sixth tournament since he left the tour for four months when his philandering became public. If his comeback is to become a success, St. Andrews seems a likely place because he won the British Open there in 2000 and 2005. Following Sunday's round, Woods was clearly looking forward to St. Andrews.

"I just always loved playing there," he said. "That was my first Open championship [as an amateur]. My first introduction to links golf was in '95, I got to play Carnoustie and St. Andrews. That's a hell of an introduction. It doesn't get any better than that and I fell in love with the golf course the first time I played it."

Woods has won 14 majors, four shy of Jack Nicklaus' record. He last won a major at the U.S. Open in 2008.

"I know what it takes to be ready for a major and I know what it takes to win major championships," he said. "I just need to get my putter organized a little bit better, and I'll need to work on my putter over there because I'm going to be tested. There are a lot of long putts there. Good shots over there sometimes leave you 50 or 60 feet away."

Before leaving, Woods stopped to sign several autographs for a crowd that supported him.

"This is a huge sports town," he said. "They were loud, boisterous and extremely respectful, and that's all any tournament would want to have."