GOLF ROUNDUP : U.S., Australia Eliminated in Dunhill Cup Openers

The winds disappeared Thursday and so did the two top seeded teams, the United States and Australia, in the first round of the Dunhill Cup at St. Andrews, Scotland.

Mark Calcavecchia, Curtis Strange and Tom Kite were upstaged by a trio of Frenchmen whose best finish in a top-line event was a third-place tie.

Marc Farry, Jean Van de Velde and Emmanuel Dussart eliminated the defending champions, 2 1/2- 1/2, in the $1-million medal-match play tournament.

The Americans putted poorly and never led any of the three matches.

“All of a sudden you’re playing against some guy named Van de Velde, who you’ve never heard of, and he’s beating you,” said Calcavecchia, the 1989 British Open champion. “Their whole team played well, it looks like, and we didn’t play at all.”

It added up to the latest embarrassment for U.S. golf, after failing to reclaim the Ryder Cup and having so many of its own major championships won by foreign players.

Australia, beaten in the first round by France last year, was beaten again, this time by New Zealand, 2-1.

Greg Norman, the top money winner on the U.S. PGA Tour, got what he described as “a good old butt-kicking” from Frank Nobilo, 67-76, before U.S. PGA champion Wayne Grady self-destructed with a quadruple-bogey 9 on the 14th hole and lost, 74-78, to Simon Owen.

No. 3 Ireland is the top-ranked squad remaining. The Irish team of Ronan Rafferty, Philip Walton and David Feherty blanked South Korea, 3-0.

Mark O’Meara’s last-gasp drive toward golf’s money-winning title moved a notch closer to reality with a nine-birdie burst that gave him the 36-hole lead in the $1.3-million Las Vegas Invitational.

A couple of months ago, O’Meara said: “I made a decision to play the last four tournaments of the year. I figured if I could win one of the first three, and then win Nabisco, I’d have a chance at the money-winning title.”

He won that first one with a 19-under-par total in San Antonio last week and continued the scoring blitz with a 64 Thursday. That put him 13-under-par at 131 and two strokes in front of the field through two rounds of this five-day, 90-hole tournament.

Tim Simpson, with a bogey-free 67 at Desert Inn, and Duffy Waldorf shared second at 133. Waldorf had a 65 at Las Vegas, the easiest of the three courses used for the first three rounds.

Cathy Gerring and Cindy Rarick shot three-under-par 69s to share the first-round lead the LPGA World Championship at Cely, France.

One stroke back in the 16-player invitational event was another American, Dottie Mochrie. The top money winner this year on the U.S. women’s tour, Beth Daniel, was tied at 71 with Marie-Laure de Lorenzi of France.

Chris Johnson was a late replacement for Nancy Lopez, who pulled out to be with her husband, former major league infielder Ray Knight, as he undergoes knee surgery. Johnson shot 72.

Bernhard Langer of Germany shot a course-record, seven-under-par 65 in the opening round of the Austrian Open at Salzburg to take the lead over a field including Jack Nicklaus.

Langer, playing with Lanny Wadkins, fired seven birdies over the 2-year-old, 6,806-yard Gut Altentann course that was designed by Nicklaus.

Wadkins shot a 67 and tied for second with Australians Mike Clayton and Bradley Hughes and Spaniard Juan Quiros Segura.

Nicklaus shot 71, putting him six strokes back.