Els’ 66 Is a Little One-Upmanship

What in the world has this British Open come to? Well, on Thursday’s opening day, the suntan lotion flowed as freely as Scottish ale, the flags were as limp as wilted lettuce, the Old Course got beat up so badly it probably aged a few years and Tiger Woods isn’t in the lead.

All right, he is only one shot behind Ernie Els, but this is a major and it seems almost odd Woods isn’t already so far out of sight you can’t find him with a search party.

Els birdied three of the last seven holes and steered in a nervy eight-footer on the fearsome 17th hole to take the lead with a six-under-par 66. Woods finished hours earlier with a 67, the same as left-hander Steve Flesch.

A two-time U.S. Open champion, Els was second to Woods at Pebble Beach last month, but the margin was 15 shots. That gives Els some inspiration this week.

“If he beats me by 15 from now, there should be an inquiry,” Els said.

While Woods is trying to become only the fifth player to win all four majors and also the youngest, Flesch has his own historical target. He could be the second left-hander to win a major, joining Bob Charles, who won the 1963 British Open at Lytham.

Flesch said he enjoyed seeing his name on the top of the leader board with Woods.

“Has anybody ever heard of him before?” Flesch joked.

Els certainly has. He watched Woods post his score and waited for his turn to take a crack at the Old Course.

“You see Tiger at five under and you haven’t even started your round, you know you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Els actually caught a break when he played the first nine holes in a very slight downwind, then played the back with no wind at all.

“You never know how the Old Lady will play tomorrow,” Els said. “You get a day like this, you have to take advantage. On a day like this, you can shoot anything.”

If you closed your eyes, you would have sworn it was Mission Bay out there, not St. Andrews Bay . . . that it was Southern California, not the east coast of Scotland.

The course is so dry, the grounds crew sprinkled some water on the fairways and greens before the first round to keep them from resembling toast. As it was, taking divots was a totally different experience because of the dry conditions. They looked liked small puffs of dust, not the standard airborne chunks of turf.

“As dry as the course is, if it eventually does blow, we had better watch out,” Els said.

Woods’ first eight holes were about as interesting as counting the chimneys on the little gray stone houses on North Street. He made all pars and was standing still while Fred Funk was busy climbing up the leader board to five under through 10 holes.

Of course, it helped Woods that it happened on the first day and not the last.

“It’s a long championship,” Woods said. “If it was an 18-hole tournament, I would have been in trouble. But since there’s 72 of them that we’ve got to play, I had a long way to go.”

Woods made his move beginning at No. 9 and piled up five birdies in a seven-hole stretch.

He birdied the ninth from 12 feet after getting there with a pitching wedge. At the 379-yard No. 10, he drove the green and two-putted from 50 feet for another birdie. He had a two-putt birdie from 30 feet at No. 12, birdied the par-five 14th after hitting driver and three-wood, then birdied the 15th when he knocked a nine iron to 10 feet and made it.

It wasn’t as though Woods left much out on the course, either.

“I did not really have a whole lot of opportunities,” he said. “But you can do that out here--you can hit average shots and the next thing you know you’re 40 or 50 feet away and it wasn’t that bad a shot. Just because the ball just rolls, it gets on the wrong side of the mound and there it goes.”

All in all, there were a whole bunch of people who wound up on the right side of the mound.

One shot behind Woods at 68 is an international group of seven that includes Tom Lehman, Dennis Paulson and Scott Dunlap, Sergio Garcia of Spain, Ian Garbutt of England, Shigeki Maruyama of Japan and Padraig Harrington of Ireland.

Harrington made a bogey at No. 13 and another one at No. 17 to drop down into the pack, but his fall wasn’t nearly as dramatic as that of Notah Begay, who made a triple-bogey seven at No. 17 and a bogey at No. 18 to conclude an opening 69 that could have been a whole lot better.

Regarded as one of the best of the New Wave Europeans, Harrington oozes confidence. He had a quick answer when asked if he could imagine a layout more suited for him than the Old Course.

“Every course I play every week is the most suited to me in that given week,” Harrington said.

Lehman won the British Open at Lytham in 1996 and the Tour Championship three months later, but nothing since. He didn’t get off to a good start with a three-putt bogey at the first hole, but that was his only mistake.

While the greens were downright bumpy, Lehman managed to solve them with a 30-foot birdie putt at No. 4 and then a 25-footer at No. 6.

“I did a lot of good things out there,” Lehman said.

There were some players who did a lot of slow things out there. Officials put several groups on the clock because of slow play, including Woods, David Gossett and Nick Price.

“I don’t know why,” said Woods, who did not see how his group could have been out of position.

Meanwhile, Garbutt found himself strangely out of position after 12 holes . . . leading the tournament. The 28-year-old from Doncaster, England, is best known for missing 11 cuts in 20 European Tour events this year, using a cut-down putter only 33 inches long and having to win a playoff in qualifying to get in.

For a while, Garbutt made short work of the Old Course. He had a stretch on the front nine of birdie, birdie, eagle, birdie. And Garbutt was seven under until he bogeyed three of the last six holes.

“It is only the first round, you know,” he said.

And it’s a good thing it is, if you have fallen behind quickly like Jesper Parnevik at 73, Davis Love III at 74, Hal Sutton at 75, Nick Price and John Daly at 76 and defending champion Paul Lawrie at 78.

Like Harrington, Flesch isn’t exactly short of confidence, and he has been playing well enough to back it up. The 33-year-old from Cincinnati has nine top 10s this year and believes the best is yet to come.

That would be nice, because Flesch hasn’t won a PGA Tour event and has knocked around the Asian Tour and Nike Tour since he turned pro 11 years ago.

“I am really not surprised I played well today,” he said. “I’ve had a good start to the year. Getting off to a fast start kind of got my confidence rolling for me. We have three long days ahead of us on a very interesting, penalizing golf course.”

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Leaders

Ernie Els: 33-33--66 -6

Tiger Woods: 35-32--67 -5

Steve Flesch: 32-35--67 -5

Dennis Paulson: 35-33--68 -4

Shigeki Maruyama: 36-32--68 -4

Tom Lehman: 34-34--68 -4

Scott Dunlap: 33-35--68 -4

Padraig Harrington: 31-37--68 -4

Ian Garbutt: 31-37--68 -4

Sergio Garcia: 35-33--68 -4

Others

Justin Leonard:36-34--70 -2

Mark O’Meara:33-37--70 -2

Nick Faldo:33-37--70 -2

Fred Couples:36-34--70 -2

Vijay Singh:36-34--70 -2

David Duval:37-33--70 -2

Colin Montgomerie:35-36--71 -1

Phil Mickelson:35-37--72 E

Jose Maria Olazabal:35-37--72 E

Davis Love III:35-39--74 +2