Canada’s top golfer posts six birdies as U.S. Open kicks off Weir roars out of gate

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This article was published 18/06/2010 (5948 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — They all love the golf course. The USGA had hand-watered the greens the night before, to soften them up a tad. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and breezy. A little cool, but you can’t have everything.

Still, you’d have thought the best professional golfers on the planet would have something. Pebble Beach, though, wasn’t giving it up Thursday, in the opening round of the 110th U.S. Open.

From the time Mike Weir putted out for bogey on the 18th hole to tie for the early lead at 1-under-par 70, five more hours passed before anyone could nudge the number even one shot lower — and it took birdies at the final hole by England’s Paul Casey and 2003 PGA champion Shaun Micheel, and a 10-foot par-saving putt by Zimbabwe’s jumbo-sized Brendon de Jonge to edge ahead of Weir & Co.

Three rounds of 69, in perfect scoring conditions. Go figure.

The world’s No. 1 and No. 2 players — Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson — shot rounds of 74 and 75, respectively, and you history buffs might want to look up the last time those two hadn’t a single birdie between them on the same day in a major. A day when Weir had six of them.

Major championships, and particularly the U.S. Open, are chock-a-block with stories of oddball first-round leaders that fade in the end, so you wouldn’t want to put a lot of stock in Micheel, who has scarcely been heard of since his 2003 win at Oak Hill, or de Jonge, the hefty Virginia Tech grad who holed out for eagle at the 14th hole to shoot his way back in after making three bogeys early in his back nine.

Even Casey, the talented Englishman, has shot lights-out in a major before, only to back off late.

But it was a nice moment for Micheel, however fleeting it may be.

“It’s amazing how quickly people forget you,” said the 41-year-old from Memphis, who’s missed the cut in his last three U.S. Opens and has never finished higher than a tie for 38th in six tries.

“I never felt my game left me, I felt it was the injury. I had surgery on a torn labrum, I was out of golf for nine months — the same time Tiger was out — and everyone was making a huge hubbub about Tiger, and my doctor said, ‘Why isn’t anyone talking about your comeback?’

“And I said, ‘Well, that’s kind of how the hierarchy works,’ ” he laughed.

Micheel, who rolled in a 30-foot downhill slider for his birdie at the last, is playing with a heavy heart. His mother is in a horrible battle with cancer that has spread to the lungs, liver, spine and brain, and though he said he feels some guilt about playing golf, “my mom wants me out here. So I’m kind of playing for her, and it’s nice to be able to play for somebody else, and not have it always be about me-me-me, and the money list, and the FedEx points.

“She’s probably not going to be around much past August.”

Some of the pre-tournament favourites might not be around much past today.

Pebble Beach won the day, and left quite a few highly regarded players wondering what hit them — like Lee Westwood, who joined Woods at 74, and Steve Stricker at 75, Stewart Cink at 76, Adam Scott 77, Camilo Villegas and Tom Watson at 78, Geoff Ogilvy 79.

“Nobody’s going to go low out here. You have to be patient. If I didn’t three-putt twice and lay up in a bunker once, my score would have been where it should have been,” said Woods, who made 15 pars but couldn’t get the ball in the hole.

Of the ever-so-slightly-knowns at the top of the board, as the afternoon wore on, de Jonge was leading solo at 3-under at the turn, but made three bogeys in four holes to start his back nine, before coming back for a share of the lead.

Former Canadian Open winner John Rollins got to the par-3 17th in good shape at 2-under, promptly shanked a chip, took two more to get on the green and two-putted for triple-bogey six. Then he double-bogeyed No. 18, solidifying his exit.

— Canwest News Service