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Padraig begins Open

17/ 7/2008

IRELAND'S Padraig Harrington began the defence of his Open title at Royal Birkdale today, battling the weather and the wrist injury which threatened his participation.

Harrington injured his right wrist on Saturday and put his chances of teeing off at 75% and only 50-50 to get through the championship, but was on the first tee as scheduled at 7.58am.

The Ryder Cup star received a loud cheer as his name was announced but faced an immediate test of his injury after slicing his opening tee shot with a 3-iron into the right-hand rough.

From there he came up 50 yards short of the green and, after pitching to 30ft, two-putted for a bogey five.

His tee-shot on the second was also pushed into the rough right of the fairway, but this time he holed from 30ft to save par and repeated the trick on the next from nine feet to remain one over par.

With two and a half hours' play gone, that was just one shot off the lead with five-time Open champion Tom Watson remaining the only player to have got under par.

Watson, now 58, led the Open after a birdie on the first but dropped back into a share of the lead with seven other players - including 2002 winner Ernie Els and fellow South African Retief Goosen - with a bogey on the second.

Playing alongside Watson was England's Justin Rose, fourth here as a 17-year-old amateur in 1998, the world number nine dropping a shot at the second to lie one over.

Heavy rain stopped in time for Australian Craig Parry to hit the opening tee shot at 6.30am, but a strong wind and intermittent rain was making playing conditions extremely tough.

R&A chief executive Peter Dawson had insisted the 7,173-yard par 70 was "not a monster", but Yorkshire's Simon Dyson would not agree with that sentiment.

Dyson, in the first group out with Parry and American Lucas Glover, went out in 39 and then ran up a nine on the par-four 10th to slump to 10 over par.

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