Newlywed Greg Norman was setting the pace at the British Open yesterday.
The 53-year-old Norman, a two-time British Open winner who married former tennis great Chris Evert last month, birdied three holes on the front side to offset a double-bogey at the gargantuan sixth, leaving him as the only player with an overall score in the red.
Norman was 1 under as he made the turn, one stroke ahead of unheralded Englishman Simon Wakefield, who holed a bunker shot at the first green. Thirteen others were within three shots of the leader, with a host of top players still hours away from teeing off and hoping to avoid the cold, soaking rain and howling winds that made life miserable for the early starters on Thursday.
PHOTO: AP
Jean Van de Velde, best remembered for his epic 72nd-hole collapse at Carnoustie nine years ago, briefly surged into contention, only to get swallowed up by this links course along the Irish Sea. He played the front side at 2-under 32, then fell back with a couple of double-bogeys on the back side.
Van de Velde finished with a 1-over 71, leaving him with a 4-over 144 at the midway point of golf’s oldest major.
The focus was again on the weather for day two of golf’s oldest major, with the early starters racing to get in as many holes as possible before another expected round of storms swept in. The forecast called for potentially heavy showers throughout the day on top of an ever-more-menacing wind, a possible repeat of Thursday morning.
Norman, who shot a par 70 in the opening round, birdied the very first hole but ran into trouble at No. 6, the 499-yard layout that’s listed as a par 4 for some reason. He knocked his second shot into the thick rough right of the fairway — near the spot where Phil Mickelson lost a ball the previous day — and hacked out short of the green. A chip and two putts later, he walked off with a 6.
But Norman, cheered on by his new wife, former tennis great Chris Evert, bounced right back. He rolled in a 25-foot birdie at the seventh, then watched a 15-footer at No. 8 curl slowly toward the cup and drop in on the very last turn, raising his putter in the air to celebrate.
The first-round leaders — Rocco Mediate of the US, Australia’s Robert Allenby and Graeme McDowell of Northern Ireland shared the top spot after shooting 69 — failed to keep pace with Norman.
Mediate, a playoff loser at the US Open, was even for the day through 10 holes, but fell three strokes behind Norman with a double-bogey at No. 11 and a bogey at the par-3 14th.
Allenby was four back, starting his round with two straight bogeys and taking two more before he made the turn. McDowell also was at 3 over, playing the front nine at 2 over and starting the back with two straight bogeys.
Sergio Garcia, looking to bounce back from a devastating playoff loss to Padraig Harrington at last year’s Open, missed a 3-footer to save par at the first but wasn’t thinking about that when he rolled in a 75-foot birdie at No. 4. The Spaniard was three strokes behind Norman.
Van de Velde was playing the Open for the first time since 2005, and just the second time in the past seven years. But he’s still haunted by the ghost of Carnoustie, where he went to the final hole of regulation with a three-stroke lead, only to recklessly throw it away by trying to finish off his first major title with a flourish.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS