Gritty Woods sets out to seal the deal

Tiger Woods carved out a four-stroke lead over the field at the US PGA Championship last night and committed himself to another two rounds of grinding golf.

The world number-one put himself in pole position in Minnesota with a second-round, two-under-par 70 at Hazeltine National to extend his lead from one shot to four with Padraig Harrington, Ross Fisher, Lucas Glover, Brendan Jones and Vijay Singh locked in a five-way tie for second place at the halfway stage of the final major of the year.

After a difficult day in windy conditions, Woods said he was happy with his five-birdie, three-bogey round.

“I’m very pleased. The wind was up today. It was pretty blustery,” Woods said.

“It was changing direction a little bit here and there. It was affecting putts.

“You had to play the wind on putts. And it was all in all just a very difficult day. I had to stay very patient and hopefully you can take advantage of opportunities if you ever got any. I just had to kind of grind it out.”