Woods targets improvement after horror show

Dublin, Ohio: Tiger Woods ended a largely forgettable week at the Memorial Tournament, languishing joint 65th in a field of 73, and conceding that he needs to clean up every aspect of his game before the upcoming US Open.

A five-times winner at Muirfield Village Golf Club, where he was the defending champion, Woods struggled with his putting on lightning-fast greens for all four rounds as he finished up a distant 20 strokes behind winner Matt Kuchar.

Though his accuracy off the tee was surprisingly good throughout the tournament, Woods totalled 119 putts during the week and paid a hefty price after running up big numbers on certain holes at a venue he knows as well as anyone.

“It happens,” Woods told reporters after closing with a level-par 72 at Muirfield Village to finish at eight-over 296, the second-highest score of his career. His highest in a 72-hole event was 298 at the 2010 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

“I will go home next week and practise. It’s just one of those weeks. This week I obviously didn’t putt well. I had bad speed all week. I thought the greens didn’t look that fast, but they were putting fast. I could never get the speed of them.”

The second major of the year, the June 13-16 US Open at Merion in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, is fast approaching and Woods gave a succinct reply when asked which areas of his game needed improving.

“Everything,” said the 37-year-old American, who won the most recent of his 14 major titles at the 2008 US Open. “You want everything clicking on all cylinders, especially at the US Open, because everything is tested in the US Open.”

Woods began the final round among the back-markers for a second day in a row and ran into trouble when he triple-bogeyed the par-three 12th after taking two shots to escape from a terrible lie in a greenside bunker, then three-putted.