Mamaroneck, N.Y. ? The longest layoff in Tiger Woods’ career ended with his shortest week at a major.

Woods kept thinking he was one putt or one shot away from turning it around Friday in the U.S. Open until there was nothing left to do but tap in for another bogey, sign for another 76 and head home.

At 12 over par, he missed the cut in a major for the first time in 10 years as a professional.

“It’s not something you want to have happen,” Woods said. “Unfortunately, I missed this one.”

Perhaps it was the rust from not having played since the final round of the Masters in April. Maybe his mind was cluttered by memories of his father, Earl, who died May 3 of cancer. Someone even suggested that he would have been better off playing two weeks ago in the Memorial as a tuneup instead of making his return at the toughest test in golf.

Woods shook his head each time.

“When you don’t execute, you’re not going to be happy either way,” Woods said. “I don’t care if you had what transpired in my life of recent or not. Poor execution is never going to feel very good.”

Woods might have known he was in trouble midway through his round, when a shot that appeared to be headed just left of the flag on the 16th hole clipped the top of a tree. It rattled through the branches and landed on a cart path, than caromed 20 yards to the left and landed against a chain-link fence in a bunker on the East Course at Winged Foot, which isn’t being used this week.

He dropped into caked mud in the trap, had no option but to pitch into the bunker short of the flag and made double bogey.

The other message came late in his round.

Woods was playing his best golf from the worst lies to salvage pars, and he was at 10 over par when he stepped onto the sixth green to size up a 60-foot putt. He looked at the scoreboard behind the green to see Steve Stricker had finished his round with a birdie on the final hole for a 69 and a 36-hole score of 1-under 139.

The U.S. Open has a rule that anyone within 10 shots of the lead makes the cut.

The gallery groaned when the score was posted, knowing that Woods was 11 shots out of the lead. Instead of making up ground, he went backward. First came a bogey from the rough on No. 8, and then a sloppy bogey on the ninth, his final hole.

From the first cut of rough, his approach came up 15 yards short of the green. What followed was a poor chip by anyone’s standards, and Woods marched after it angrily when it scooted some 20 feet by the hole. The par putt never had a chance.

The scores would have had to balloon in the afternoon for Woods to play the weekend, and that didn’t happen. The cut fell at 9-over-par 149, and 63 players made it. Woods missed by three strokes. It was time to warm up the engines on his yacht, where he had stayed for the week.