Sergio Garcia improved by 24 strokes over his last British Open at Carnoustie. An 18-year-old amateur made it through an entire day without a bogey. And a guy known more as a team player put himself right in the thick of things.
Then there's Tiger Woods, who always seems positioned to win the claret jug, no matter where they play the oldest major of them all or what the conditions.
Carnoustie can now be called "Car-Nicely" -- a striking contrast to the beast that brought most of the world's top players to their knees in 1999, when the Open last came to this historic links along the North Sea.
PHOTO: AP
That year, Garcia opened with a triple bogey on his way to an 89, still the worst round of his professional career. He followed with an 83, the second-worst round of his career, and headed home at 30-over par, driven to tears by a course known as "Car-Nasty."
On Thursday, Garcia birdied the very first hole, finished with a 6-under 65 and clearly took note of how much difference eight years can make.
Even if he doesn't win his first major, he might already have clinched another award.
"Most improved," Garcia said.
But there were plenty of low scores to go around. Amateur Rory McIlroy was three strokes off the lead with the only bogey-free round of the day. The kid from Holywood -- a small town in Northern Island, but pronounced the same way as the US movie capital -- not only hung with the grown-ups, he beat most of them.
Garcia and Ireland's Paul McGinley, a Ryder Cup stalwart for Europe who shot 67, were the only players to put up lower scores than McIlroy.
But, while Garcia, McGinley and McIlroy have never won a major, there was a guy four shots back who's got a dozen of them all by himself. That's why all eyes were on Woods, who opened with a 69 in his quest to become the first player since Peter Thomson more than a half-century ago to win three straight Open titles.
Woods added another signature moment to the majors when he holed a 27m birdie putt on the par-3 16th.
"I was trying to get it up there close, anywhere where I could have an easy second putt," Woods said. "Lo and behold, it falls in."
But Garcia is the guy out front, generally recognized as the best player never to win a major even though this was the first time the Spaniard led after any round at one of them since he opened with a 66 in the 1999 PGA Championship.
A month before that breakthrough performance, Garcia made only one birdie in 36 holes in his pro debut at the British Open. Contrast that with Thursday's opening round, when he had seven.
"It's not about revenge for me," Garcia insisted. "I just want to play a little bit like I did today, give myself good looks at birdies, not suffer too much out there on the course and put myself in a position where I can do something on Sunday."
The links course that was roundly criticized for grueling, unfair conditions at its last Open presented a far more gentle test in the opening round this time, especially with the rain-softened turf and only a wee breeze off the North Sea.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier