Tiger and Rory leave rivals in the shade

AS IF the appetite wasn’t whetted enough for the forthcoming Ryder Cup, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy both opened up with fabulous rounds of 62 in the third FedEx Cup play-off event, the BMW Championship, last night. It was Woods’s lowest opening round on the PGA Tour for 12 years as he celebrated his wild card pick in dazzling fashion. McIlroy (above) matched him but still left the course feeling a twinge of what might have been, for he actually had a golden opportunity to become the first European to shoot 59 on either of the game’s two main circuits. Six birdies in a row took McIlroy to the brink of that mythical score. He was nine under for 15 holes on storied Aronimink, Pennsylvania, with its par of 70 — with the shortest par-four on the course to come, and a par-five. But a bogey at the first of those holes took the wind from his sails and he followed it with another at the difficult eighth. At least the birdie on offer at his last hole, the ninth, restored some of the gloss to what had been a superlative show. Woods had struggled on Thursdays at events this year — in 14 tournaments, he was an aggregate two over for the first round and 66 under for the other 54 holes — but he put that right in some style with his course record-equalling score. The 14-time major champion wasted no time in electrifying another enormous gallery by reaching the turn in just 29 shots — the first time he has done that since the 2007 Tour Championship. Some of Woods’s shotmaking recalled his great years while the decision to go back to his Scotty Cameron putter with which he won most of his majors worked a treat. Woods is the only member of America’s Ryder Cup team who hasn’t won an event over the past 12 months but he’s certainly started like a man hellbent on putting that right. His next win will also represent another landmark since it will be the 80th on the PGA Tour of his incredible career — but to achieve it, he might have to win a shootout against McIlroy. Wouldn’t that be something before the Ryder Cup? Meanwhile, Matt Wallace (68) continued the fine form which almost earned him a Ryder Cup debut as Germany’s Maximilian Kieffer claimed the first-round lead at the Omega European Masters.