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Tiger Woods will need to drive the ball better if he is to move up the leaderboard in the second round of the WGC-Mexico Championship. He ranked 71st out of 72nd players on Thursday in strokes gained off the tee, and was just 67th in driving distance, hitting just 4 drivers. Woods played pretty conservatively and probably needs to be more aggressive off the tee. He averaged just 288 off the tee when the field average was 305.
New Zealand golfer Ryan Fox won his first European Tour event on Sunday in Perth, Australia and only learned Tuesday that he would get into the WGC-Mexico Championship field. That meant a journey of more than 10,000 miles, and he did not arrive until 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, with no chance to see the golf course. So a round of 72 was pretty impressive, despite Fox, 32, fighting off jet lag and fatigue. "I didn't know what planet I was on when the alarm went off at 7 this morning,'' he said.Fox said the decision to come wasn't that easy. Next week is the 100th playing of the New Zealand Open, meaning another long journey back.
Phil Mickelson is not a lock to play the Players Championship in three weeks. He's not a lock for anything in Florida. After trying to defend his title this week in Mexico, he said he might play as many as three times prior to the Masters -- or maybe just once. As much as he likes the new schedule, Mickelson said "I might have to work around a few things.'' One of those is that he is unlikely to play the week prior to every major this year. He said he's looking at Arnold Palmer, Players, Match Play and Valero coming up, he's just not sure how many he will choose.