Adam Scott birdied his first six holes to set up a course-record 10-under 62 at Royal Sydney yesterday to take a three-stroke lead after the first round of the Australian Open.
Scott is attempting to become the second golfer after Robert Allenby in 2005 to win all three Australian majors in the same year.
Scott broke the previous Royal Sydney mark of 65 set by five players at the 2008 Australian Open. After Scott’s opening birdie run, he parred the next eight holes before making birdie on his final four.
Photo: EPA
“The longest putt I had on those opening birdies was about five feet,” Scott said. “I hit a lot of quality shots right out of the blocks this morning.”
Canadian Ryan Yip shot 65 to tie the previous record and was in second place. David McKenzie had a 66 while two-time champion Aaron Baddeley was in a group with 67s tied for fourth.
Rory McIlroy, trying to win for the first time this year, shot 69, seven behind Scott. McIlroy made the turn at two-under, bogeyed 11 and 12, but had three birdies in his final seven holes, including on the 18th.
The US’ Kevin Streelman, who played with Matt Kuchar on the runner-up US team in last week’s World Cup at Royal Melbourne, shot 70 playing in the same group as Scott and Jason Day.
Day, who won the individual stroke play at the World Cup, also shot 70.
Scott could not recall starting any round with six birdies, thinking that he once had five in a row to start a round in Qatar. He finished his round yesterday with an approach to nearly tap-in range on the ninth.
Most of the best scores yesterday came in the morning groups as the wind picked up in the afternoon. Similar weather conditions are forecast for today, when Scott will play in the afternoon.
Scott won the Australian PGA and Australian Masters before sharing the World Cup team trophy with Day last week in Melbourne.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
‘SU-PENKO’: Hsieh and Ostapenko face a rematch against their Australian Open final opponents, the same duo Hsieh played in last year’s Wimbledon semi-finals Taiwanese women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei and Latvian partner Jelena Ostapenko on Wednesday survived a near upset to the unseeded duo of Sorana Cirstea of Romania and Russia’s Anna Kalinskaya, setting up a semi-final showdown against last year’s winners. Despite losing a hard-fought opening set 7-6 (7/4) on a tiebreak, the fourth seeds turned up the heat, losing just five games in the final two sets to handily put down Cirstea and Kalinskaya 6-3, 6-2. Nicknamed “Su-Penko,” the pair are next to face top seeds Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic and Taylor Townsend of the US in a reversal of last
RSS