AKRON, Ohio -- When he was a teenager, playing in what is now the EDS Byron Nelson Championship, Tiger Woods hit a ball into one of the Port-O-Lets on the 16th hole.

"But it wasn't in-in," he was quick to point out. "The gentleman just happened to open the door at the wrong time."

Now Woods has an even more bizarre story to tell. In Friday's second round of the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational, he hit his approach on his final hole over the grandstands -- AND the roof of the clubhouse.

Feature content

FREE video: Tiger Woods on his bizarre 18th hole Shot of the Day: Jim Furyk on No. 15 Rd. 2 highlights More FREE video FREE audio: PODCASTS: Listen to our latest! Tiger Woods talks about his adventures on the 18th in the second round Jim Furyk talks about his hole in one on the 15th hole More player interviews PGA TOUR Network on XM Satellite Radio: Listen to live coverage and analysis during every round! TOURCast Follow every shot and track player stats from the Bridgestone Invitational Information Tee times Rules conference on Woods' shot

Woods went on to make an extremely unusual bogey but the defending champion still holds the lead in the $7.5 million event. Woods' round of 64 left him 9 under for the tournament and one stroke ahead of Davis Love III.

The errant 9-iron covered what Woods' caddie Steve Williams estimated at 212 yards, which was about 45 more than he had needed to find the pin. Instead, the ball hit the cart path behind the bleachers and took a huge bounce over the building.

For a while, no one seemed to know where the ball had gone. One man searched the roof. Some people thought it had disappeared into an air conditioning duct. Still others felt it had gone over the clubhouse completely.

PGA TOUR Rules Official Dillard Pruitt had the task of sorting through the conflicting information to make a determination on how Woods should proceed. Another rules official, Mike Shea, was nearby assisting Woods' playing partner, Paul McGinley, who had also hit the ball over the grandstand. Shea immediately started a stopwatch.

Pruitt walked through the clubhouse and talked to a security guard who had seen a young man pick up a ball that had landed in his cart, put it in the drink holder and drive off. He had yelled at the guard and asked him why he was throwing balls at him.

The security guard and a man unloading a truck both showed Pruitt where the cart was when the ball landed in it. Using their information as reasonable evidence, he then began to act under the temporary immovable obstruction rule to determine a drop and distance for Woods. The clubhouse area is not out of bounds.

"That's when I decided the ball was gone, and we're not going to be able to find that ball, (and) that Tiger was going to be able to put another ball in play," Pruitt said. A short time later, Shea radioed Pruitt to tell him the five minutes allotted to locate a lost ball were up but the determination had already been made.

A range finder was used to help determine the distance between where Woods' ball was picked up and the pin. Pruitt said the distance was 97 yards. Woods said he worked with a number of 84.

Then Woods was allowed a free drop to the right of the green to get line of sight relief from the grandstands. Another drop was necessary when the first landed on the cart path. The entire process took just over 30 minutes, and the group behind played through.

Woods, who said he had never seen a ruling like it, proceeded to hit his third shot, a 60-degree wedge, onto the green. He had a lengthy putt for par that sent him to his tip-toes as he tried unsuccessfully to coax the ball into the hole.

All in all, Woods said he felt fortunate things unfolded the way they did. "If I would have had to re-drop and play where I played my second shot from, it would have been a tough 6, really," he said. "So it was a huge break to ... get out of there with a 5."

Woods initially thought the clubhouse was out of bounds, which it wasn't. The only area on the course that is OB is the driving range. He also thought he would have had to find and identify the ball to avoid the penalty for it being lost.

The ball was not considered lost, though, because Pruitt was able to correctly determine what had happened to it.

"If a person hits a ball out in the rough on the seventh hole anywhere on the golf course and his ball disappears because someone picks it up and leaves, that is not a lost ball," Shea said.

"He can't identify (the ball when there is) reasonable evidence that an outside agency has picked up the ball and left. You're not going to get him for a lost ball because there's reasonable evidence that someone picked this ball up.

"So Dillard made the judgment with the comments from the chef and the police officer that the young man picked this ball up."

Had Pruitt not been able to determine what happened to the ball, the ruling would have been that the ball was lost in an obstruction, i.e., the clubhouse. Shea said Woods would have dropped between the grandstand and the clubhouse, then taken line of sight relief from the bleachers.

"So he probably would have ended up playing his shot closer to the green than what he did, but it would have been ... on the same angle," said Shea, who added that Woods would have still been hitting his third shot at that point.