The Players Championship: Tiger Woods rallies, Zach Johnson is in three-way tie for lead, but unpredictability looms

Yet here?

“For the caliber of player they are,” McIlroy said of Woods and Mickelson, “they definitely have got more layouts that are more to their liking.”

For decades, no one has annually found the Stadium Course to his liking. Since 1982, when the Players first moved to this PGA Tour-owned site — where the tour itself is headquartered — only four men have won the event twice: Fred Couples, Steve Elkington, Davis Love III and Hal Sutton.

If the current leader board holds, that number will remain the same. And the list of champions doesn’t figure to include McIlroy anytime soon. He birdied the first hole he played Friday, the 10th, and didn’t make another birdie all day. He had not missed a cut in 53 weeks. This comes not even a week after he lost to Rickie Fowler in a three-way playoff in Charlotte, where he played splendid golf. He was asked whether he hit the ball much differently in his 36 holes here.

“Not at all,” he said. “It’s unbelievable. I shoot 14 under last week and I feel like I hit it just the same this week, and I’m going home.”

McIlroy has played here three times, and missed the cut all three. He skipped the event last year, a decision he regretted. He promised Friday that, despite results, he’ll be back in 2013.

“I’ve come back here a much better player, I feel,” McIlroy said. “A much more consistent player, experienced player, and I felt like I would come here and think my way around the golf course and just try and play steady golf. I tried to do that, and just didn’t happen.”

That would leave Johnson, the 2007 Masters champ. “I feel like the golf course is good for my game,” he said, a nod to the eight birdies he made Friday. It leaves Na, the notoriously slow player who tied for 12th at last month’s Masters. And Kuchar, the permanently smiling three-time tour winner, who has never taken a title of this magnitude.

“This course can bite you pretty quickly,” Kuchar said.

It bit its share of the world’s elite Thursday and Friday. “It’s an absolute challenge,” Woods said — a challenge that, from year to year and day to day, is impossible to tell who will master.