Greg Norman shows a bit of nostalgia with first round 70

Thursday, July 17, 2008 5:10 pm (Eastern)

By Sal Johnson

Talk about rolling back the hands of time, it was 22 years ago when Greg Norman won his first British Open at Turnberry. Thursday's round was very reminiscent of that round in 1986 that was played on a windy, cold rainy day.

Greg Norman stats for the day
Category	figures
Fairways hit:	7 of 14
Driving average:	288.5
Greens hit:	10 of 18
Putts:	28
0-putt greens:	0
1-putt greens:	8
2-putt greens:	10
3-putt greens:	0
Scrambling:	6 of 8 (75.0%)

Norman looked a lot like he did in his prime, Despite getting married to tennis star Chris Evert just three weeks ago and not working very hard on his game, Norman looked as good as he did in his prime. Of course there are alway keys to a good round and Norman's putter did the job today as he had just 28 putts. He also had the luck of the draw, despite playing late conditions were better in the afternoon than in the morning.

"I practise more tennis than golf," Norman told the press. "But there's something about this tournament, the atmosphere, the excitement. Norman hasn't played in the British Open since 2005 but decided to play because he was entered in next week's British Senior at Troon. Norman was very happy in his first round as he said that he hit the ball great and putted well. He made a six-footer for birdie at 17 and left himself with 15 feet at the last to join Rocco Mediate, Robert Allenby and Graeme McDowell in first. He missed that putt but was happy with the round but warned that he hasn't been in position to contend in a while.

"I need to keep my expectations very, very low," Norman warned. "Take one shot at a time. I haven't played a lot of golf. I like the golf course. I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing."

The question on everyone's minds will be if he can continue the run on Friday and possibly stay in contention for the weekend. At the age of 53 the odds aren't very good if you consider that nobody over the age of 49 has ever won a major (Julies Boros, was 48 years and four months old when he won the 1968 PGA Championship).

Still look for Norman to give it a run and bring a lot of excitement back in this event that lost Tiger Woods to injury and won't have Ernie Els, Phil Mickeson or Vijay Singh contending.

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