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| |  Thursday, 13 June, 2002, 22:48 GMT 23:48 UK Woods grabs first-round lead Tiger Woods hit a birdie on the last hole Tiger Woods birdied the final hole to take an outright lead after a high-scoring first round of the US Open in Long Island. Woods was one of only six players to break par on the Bethpage State Park Black Course - the longest ever used for the US Open.
The US Masters champion hit a three-under-par 67 to move one shot clear of Sergio Garcia. "I'm very happy. I hung in there and grinded my way around," said Woods. "This golf course is very difficult to play." Woods said the late birdie was a great psychological boost. "It's always nice to end on a birdie. No matter how bad a day or how good a day you have had, you sleep better after a birdie." Garcia picked up three shots in all and bogeyed the par-four sixth before finishing on two under. "The conditions were almost perfect out there today so you can see how tough this course is," said Garcia.
"I'm happy with the way I played. I managed to hit a lot of fairways and that's one of the keys around here. "And when I didn't, I was able to scramble around and save some good pars." The Spaniard was one clear of Americans Jeff Maggert and Dudley Hart and South Korea's K.C. Choi, who produced matching 69s on a cool and overcast day. "Despite the overnight rain, the greens didn't seem that different from the last few days in terms of pace," said Hart. A further shot back in a tie for sixth was Phil Mickelson, who got off to a fast birdie-birdie start before faltering with a double-bogey at the difficult 459-yard 15th.
The left-hander ended the day level on 70 veteran Briton Nick Faldo, fellow Americans Steve Lowery and Scott Dunlap, and Ireland's Padraig Harrington. "This is as hard a US Open as I've played, and that's given we played in perfect conditions today," Mickelson said. "The fairways are as tight as I've seen, the rough is as thick and as penalising as I've seen and they've got the greens rolling two feet faster than we normally see them." US Open: First-round scores | |
See also:  14 Jun 02 | US Open Top US Open stories now: Links to more US Open stories are at the foot of the page. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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