Tiger Woods insists his confidence is rising despite missing the cut once again at a major championship.
Once golf's dominant figure, Woods has now failed to play the third round at three successive majors - his latest early exit coming courtesy of scores of 75 and 73 at the US PGA Championship.
After completing his second round on Saturday, following a delay caused by stormy weather the previous evening, Woods reiterated his belief that he is on the right track.
"The confidence is growing quickly. That's the fun part," said the 14-time major champion.
"I'm hitting shots and able to hit shots that I haven't been able to hit in years and that's nice. And to have the control that I need to have going forward, it's starting to come back, which is nice.
"I just need to get more consistent in tournament golf. The only way you can do that is by playing and, as I said, I have a lot of golf to be played around the world [in 2015]."
Woods again blamed poor putting as the main factor in his latest failure.
"I hit it good enough to be where I needed to be, but I putted awful. I finally figured something out today on the putting green, but the damage had already been done," he added. "I finally rolled the ball coming in but unfortunately it was a too little too late.
"It's been one or the other [this season]. Ball striking sound then putting bad, or putting great then ball striking is not so solid. I haven't been able to put both together consistently for an entire event. Maybe for a day or two but not for an event.
"I'm pleased at the way I'm starting to hit the golf ball. Now if I can start putting like I did today or how I did at Quicken Loans a couple of weeks ago, start putting like that, then we got something."