GOLF SENIORS TOUR - BRITISH OPEN:THE OLD clubhouse clock at Sunningdale was trapped at precisely 9.22 yesterday morning when Tom Watson stepped forward to hit his first drive, his arrival on the tee at the Old Course greeted by heavy applause from a couple of thousand men of a certain age.

Last week’s British Open was over, the Senior Open – the one title the “flat-bellies”, as Lee Trevino calls them, will never win – was off and walking.

You have to be at least 50 to play senior golf. Watson, as everyone who can read a sports page now knows, is just a few weeks short of his 60th birthday and, apparently, a living marvel in this yoof-crazy world.

His opening drive split the fairway at this kindly par five, his approach speared the heart of the first green and he two-putted for a birdie four. Game on, old game over.

Alongside him Greg Norman and Sandy Lyle did their best to believe the day’s biggest gallery was there for them as well.

By the time they finished four and a bit hours later, Watson and Norman were three under par, Lyle was two under and hoping nobody asked him a Colin Montgomerie question. Nobody did for the simple reason all the journalists gathered at this club on the Berkshire-Surrey border were circling Watson.

Patiently, he went back over his feelings at losing the other Open championship, his regret at the missed eight-foot putt that placed him in a play-off instead of the game’s most illustrious history book. Have you watched it again on TV, asked someone.

“No, and I don’t want to,” said Watson. “That was the ugliest stroke in the world. I don’t want to relive that thing.”

On Tuesday he said his experience of mingling with seriously wounded soldiers back from Iraq placed his failure to close a special deal at Turnberry into a low-key context. Yesterday it was a text informing him that a good friend had just died from brain cancer. “He was just a couple of years older than me. It puts what happened Sunday back into the right light.”

Watson’s 67 was a typical, brisk round. Even more typically, it could have been better if he had not passed up several opportunities over the back nine. This hiccupping putter thing is not only the story of Watson’s last week but of the last couple of decades.

Still, his runner-up spot in the year’s third major is still out there and encouraging tsunamis of anticipation among the older chaps. The latest convert to this older-is-occasionally-better club is Norman, whose third place in the Open last year started this wrinkly trend.

“I believe that somebody in their 50s will now win a major,” he said. “It won’t happen on a Bethpage Black but it will happen at somewhere like St Andrews (next year’s venue) or Royal St George’s or Lytham. On those types of courses it will happen.”

American Fred Funk leads the tournament after posting the lowest opening round in a Senior Open Championship with a 64.

Funk was only one under par at the turn thanks to a birdie at the par-five opening hole, but the 53-year-old burst into life on the back nine with five birdies, including one at 17 where he chipped in from a bunker.

Funk’s round gave him a two-shot cushion over compatriots Jay Haas and Loren Roberts, South African Chris Williams – and Ireland’s Des Smyth.

Smith also birdied the first, and beat the card five more times, but dropped a shot at sixth and 17th.

Denis O’Sullivan also got off to a good start, with four birdies and two bogeys leaving him tied for 11th on two under.

Mark McNulty is just a shot farther back after a 69.

Guardian Service