O'Hair Heeds Tiger's Advice And Leads Championship After First Round

Sports Betting News - September 25th, 2009 - Written by Scott

With a $10 million bonus going to the winner of this year's FedEx Cup, it seems kind of odd that players would give advise to their opponents. Tiger Woods, after practicing on the back nine with Sean O'Hair the day before the tournament began, offered some advise to O'Hair in regards to his putting. O'Hair listened and Woods might want to reconsider doing this again as O'Hair is the leader after the first round at East Lake. O'Hair made enough putts to propel him to his opening round lead and finish with a 4-under 66.

"I believe in what he said, and I think it's the key for me to kind of take my putting to another level," O'Hair said. "Getting advice like that from good players is obviously awesome, but getting it from basically the greatest of all time is pretty cool. I mean, I'm his competition, for him to help me out like he did was very classy, I thought."

Woods, who is at 3-under, had no regrets in offering the advise to his friend.

"It's very simple," Woods said. "You always help your friends. Sean is a friend of mine, and like all my friends, you always try to make their life better somehow. Sean has been struggling a bit on the greens this year, and I thought I could offer a little bit of help and insight to how he could change that."

On a course that was closed on Monday and into Tuesday morning due to about two feet of rain that flooded the Atlanta area over the past week, it had some of the firmest greens the players have seen all year. There was even a possibility that the tournament would have to be delayed due to the flooding. The course has really dried out and one player even noted that the greens are "like bricks."

"The course was playing fairly long, and then the greens are just incredibly firm, probably the most firm we've played all year," O'Hair said. "Maybe The Players Championship is a close second. Kind of ironic since we got so much rain."

After getting off to an unimpressive start, Woods regained composure on the back nine and got three birdies during a four hole stretch and is tied for second along with Stewart Cink and Padraig Harrington. The course played much different than expected and only 8 players managed to break par. Breaking par seemed to be a big accomplishment for the day.

"Under par ... the golf course, considering all that rain we had, it's really dried out, and the greens are like bricks," he said. "You have to be very smart coming into the greens to give yourself any kind of aggressive birdies."

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