Woods is the silent type During yesterday's two-minute silence for victims of last week's London bombings, Tiger Woods couldn't but reflect on how lucky his own mother, Kutilda, had been. She had been holidaying in London - while on a tour of Europe with friends - and was in a hotel across the road from one bomb site when the explosions occurred.

Woods only found out on Wednesday from his coach, Hank Hainey, that his mother had been in such proximity to the bombings. Asked if he was surprised she hadn't mentioned it to him, Woods replied: "We don't do that in our family. When my dad had cancer, he didn't say anything. When I had knee surgery, I didn't say anything. We just do that. It's one of our deals being a Woods, I guess. We kind of deal with things and move on."

Brian has work cut out

Brian McElhinney doesn't get paid for what he does on a golf course, but he has some work to do if he's to have any chance of capturing the medal awarded traditionally to the leading amateur in the British Open. The 22-year-old Donegal player opened with a six-over-par 78.

"It was a bit nerve-wracking on the first tee," confessed McElhinney. "I struggled with my long game, just didn't play very well tee-to-green. I was very poor. Out here, you have to put the ball into position and I didn't do that."

Eric Ramsay, who failed to get a place on the Walker Cup team for the match with the United States in Chicago next month, led the amateur challenge after an opening 68.

Clarke feels the chill

With a putter as cold as a polar ice cap, Darren Clarke - who, ironically, had spent a great deal of time working on his putting before the championship - could only ruefully reflect on a round of 73 that, he opined, "should have been no worse than 69 or 70".

In the official statistics, Clarke ran up 34 putts with two three-putts. In actual fact, he had six three-putts, including those from just off the greens when he had a putter in his hand.

"I just had no feel of the greens or the pace of the greens at all. You're always going to have some awkward putts on these greens, 40- or 50-footers, but I didn't expect to three-whack them all the time and that is what I did," he said.

Not surprisingly, the first place of refuge after his round was . . . the putting green!

Dyson is the early bird

Simon Dyson had the distinction of hitting the first tee shot of the 134th Open championship. Yet, in his youth he aspired to be a professional footballer.

"I trained with York City for a bit but it was short lived,"he said after shooting 70.