USPGA gets off to a stinker

Golf’s final major of the year, the United States PGA championship, began today with the very first shot being fired out of bounds.

Hawaii-born John Guyton, one of the 25 club professionals in the field, was the player concerned and after double-bogeying the 460-yard first the 26-year-old bogeyed the next three holes to stand five over par.

The starts of Colin Montgomerie and Lee Westwood on the Oak Hill course in Rochester, New York, were better than that – but it was hard work for both of them.

Westwood, given a special invitation by the PGA of America after dropping outside the world’s top 200, needed great chips on the 10th and 11th to save his pars, while Montgomerie had to get up and down from sand at the 226-yard 11th to avoid a second successive bogey.

Back at the scene of Europe’s 1995 Ryder Cup victory – of the team only he and Bernhard Langer are present this week – Montgomerie hooked his opening drive and the fact that it landed in the thick rough hardly mattered because he was behind a giant tree.

The only action was to hack it onto the fairway and from there he pitched to 20 feet and two-putted.

The early leader was left-hander Phil Mickelson.