Adam Scott, Jason Dufner lead at Doral

In fierce and relentless wind on the TPC Blue Monster at Doral, Fla., Adam Scott kept the ball in play and then hung on for dear life for a six-under-par 66 that gave him a share of the lead with Jason Dufner in the Cadillac Championship.

“When you’re in the fairway on a day like today, you get a chance to hit it somewhere near the hole, give yourself an opportunity,” Scott said. “If you’re in the rough, it’s very hard to even just hit the green, let alone give yourself a chance. I took advantage of the good shots early on, and then battled by way in from there.”

It was a battle all day for Rory McIlroy in his first event at No. 1 in the world. He twice flirted with the water, had a three-putt bogey and wound up with a 73.

Tiger Woods wasn’t much better. He began his round with a tap-in eagle on the par-five first hole, but narrowly missed the fairways and had a tough time figuring out the wind and whether the ball would jump out of the rough. Woods badly misjudged the line of his chip on the 18th hole and closed with a bogey for a 72.

It wasn’t a devastating start for either of them.

Only a dozen players managed to break 70, and a dozen more broke par. The average score was 72.7, and no hole was more terrifying that the par-four 18th, which was 471 yards dead into the wind, water hugging the entire left side of the hole and front of the green.

Charl Schwartzel and Thomas Bjorn were at 68, while the group at 69 included PGA champion Keegan Bradley and Steve Stricker, who was tied for the lead through 12 holes and dropped three shots in the final hour.

Sergio Garcia had the ugliest finish of all.

The Spaniard was one shot out of the lead through 12 holes. He didn’t hit a fairway the rest of the way, nor did he make so much as a par. He followed five straight bogeys by hitting two shots into the water on the 18th and taking triple bogey. Over that six-hole stretch, Garcia went from being five under par to signing for a 75.

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Matt Jones and George McNeill topped the leaderboard at six-under 66 in the PGA Tour’s windy Puerto Rico Open. Ben Curtis was a stroke back at Trump International Golf Club-Puerto Rico in Rio Grande.

ETC.

Zenyatta gives birth to foal

Zenyatta, the 2010 horse of the year who won 19 of 20 races during her stellar career, has given birth for the first time.

A post on her website says Zenyatta had a dark bay colt shortly after 4 p.m. PST Thursday at Lane End’s Farm in Versailles, Ky. The colt weighed 130 pounds and has a white star on his forehead and some white on his feet, the website says.

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Retired NFL safety Coy Wire said he was part of a small group of Buffalo Bills players who pooled money on a weekly basis and rewarded themselves for hurting opponents during his rookie season in 2002. Though the Bills were at that time coached by Gregg Williams, Wire insisted the “pay-for-play pool” was solely player-driven.

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The Oakland Raiders have restructured the contracts of quarterback Carson Palmer, defensive tackle Richard Seymour and safety Michael Huff to try to get under the salary cap.

The Raiders did not reveal terms of the new contracts, but Mac’s Football Blog reported that the team would save more than $11 million against the 2012 cap by extending the deals for Seymour and Huff. Palmer had a $12.5-million base salary for 2012 before the new deal.