Woods playing, acting like Tiger of old

Tiger Woods shot me one of those slightly irked looks when I asked what it felt like to have the lead at a golf tournament after two rounds.

“I’ve been here before, so it’s not a strange feeling,” he said.

And maybe that’s the real clue, as much as being 13 under par at the midway point of the Chevron World Challenge, that Woods is on his way back to the top.

After spending 2010 struggling, in every sense, he’s suddenly playing — and acting — like the Tiger of old again.

Imperious.

Like a man who knows that the top of the leaderboard is where his name belongs.

For the record, Woods hasn’t led any tournament after two rounds in more than a year, since the 2009 Australian Masters, the last tournament he won.

That was also the last tournament he played before his life was consumed by a sex scandal that cost him his marriage and his Q-rating.

Woods wasn’t quite as stellar Friday in his play as he had been Thursday, but, in a sense, that in itself provided another clue to his reincarnation.

He’s only been able to string together back-to-back rounds in the 60s twice this year.

The main reason for that is that he’s too often killed any momentum he may have had by not recovering from mistakes.

On Friday, there were some loose swings, but, crucially, no bogeys. He completed his round with a 6-under 66, only one shot higher than his Thursday number.

Only Paul Casey — who had a hole-in-one — also kept a clean card in the second round.

The closest Woods came to a bogey was settling for par on the par-5 13th when he was just off the green in two.

It was the only time he failed to take advantage of one of Sherwood Country Club’s five par 5s through the first two rounds.

“I felt like today it was important to take care of the par 5s again,” Woods said. “There’s (been) 10 par 5s so far, and I’ve played them 10 under, so that’s pretty good.”

Woods said he relied on the memory of his past four wins here to formulate his game plan.

“The years that I’ve won here, I’ve played the par 5s really well,” he said. “There's a couple of little short holes, like 10 and 1, that you should be able to make birdies on, and you put that together, you’re shooting 65.”

The other revelation of Friday was that Woods, who’s using the same Nike putter he tried at St Andrews and used in the final round at the Australian Masters last month, made a handful of clutch par putts.

Woods said the difference between now and when he first began working with Sean Foley is that he can think better with Foley’s ideas and self-correct when he’s on the course.

“I understand what the fixes are in Sean’s system,” he said. “That’s something that I couldn’t quite do early on when we started working together.

“Today I hit a couple of loose shots there in the middle part of the round, but I knew what the fix was, got it together and hit good shots after that.

“It wasn’t quite as sharp as yesterday was, but it was good enough.”

Woods played on Friday alongside Rory McIlroy, the young Irishman who was reportedly feuding with Woods.

McIlroy, who double-bogeyed the last hole from the middle of the fairway to shoot a 2-under round of 70, set the record straight about their relationship.

“A mountain out of a molehill,” McIlroy said.

He said he was asked if he wanted to play against Woods in the Ryder Cup and that he responded that he would, given that Woods wasn’t playing well.

“It wasn’t anything. I’ve always got along good with Tiger,” he said.

McIlroy hadn’t ever played a competitive round with Woods before.

“He played better than I played today and didn’t make any mistakes,” McIlroy said. “I played with him at the Memorial this year (in the pre-tournament skins game), and he was struggling a little bit.

“Today, he just played really solid golf.

“I haven’t watched a lot of him this year, but from what I’ve seen, it just looked like mentally he wasn’t quite there. I think he’s in a better place.”

Woods gets McIlroy’s best mate Saturday, Northern Ireland’s Graeme McDowell, who shot 69 on Friday to be at 9 under par for the tournament, four adrift of the lead.

“To shoot 3 under and not play my best, I’m pretty happy with that,” McDowell said.