Birthday boy Funk gives himself gift of a great round

Fred Funk celebrated his 51st birthday Thursday by carding a solid 71 that left him tied with Tiger Woods and defending champ Geoff Ogilvy. Funk missed only three fairways and made some big putts to hang tough with the youngsters. 

By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.com Chief of Correspondents

OAKMONT, Pa. -- Old course. Old guy. Good play.

That's the way Fred Funk described the solid 1-over 71 he shot Thursday in the opening round of the 107th U.S. Open at Oakmont. No need to mince words. Funk was right-on in his assessment.

The round left Funk, who celebrated his 51st birthday Thursday, just three strokes off the lead held by Nick Dougherty, who is 26 years his junior. He's tied with 15 others, including defending champion Geoff Ogilvy and the incomparable Tiger Woods.

Funk called Oakmont "the hardest course I have ever played." Yet the man who has already won on the PGA TOUR and Champions Tour this year was hardly surprised by his performance, which included a liberal dose of four birdies.

After all, for the first time since he won the Mayakoba Golf Classic at Riviera Maya-Cancun Funk is swinging pain-free. He started a stretching routine the week before the U.S. Open qualifier, spending up to three hours a day to relieve the tightness in his back, and the regimen is paying dividends.

Not to mention, at 7,230 yards, Oakmont is not out of reach for Funk, who is one of the shortest hitters on either Tour. And his vaunted accuracy off the tee -- Funk ranks third on the PGA TOUR -- allows him to avoid adventures in the lush rough lurking on the edge of the fairways.

So what if the fans at the first tee serenaded Funk with "Happy Birthday" Thursday? Old man par doesn't know how old he is.

He's not the oldest player in the field at Oakmont this week -- that distinction goes to 58-year-old Allen Doyle, who has won the last two U.S. Senior Opens. Should Funk emerge victorious on Sunday, though, he'd be the oldest major champion, eclipsing Jack Nicklaus, who was 46 when he captured the 1986 Masters.

"I think par doesn't know an age as long as you're playing well," Funk said. "If you're feeling good and you get a golf course that rewards accuracy and keeping the ball in play (good things will happen).

"It's not overwhelmingly long out there. Yardage doesn't seem to matter that much. There are extremely long holes, but they're not playing out of my reach, I can get to them with a reasonable club."

Take the 15th, a whopper of a 500-yard par 4. Funk hit a 6-iron there, then made a bomb from 60 feet across the green for birdie. He hit 4-iron to the green at the 479-yard seventh -- but "I probably could have hit a 5-iron," Funk said with a grin.

Funk only missed three fairways Thursday and when his ball did stray, it found the first cut -- not the club-strangling deep grass that claimed so many other victims in the first round.

"And 18 I hit a perfect shot that ended up in the first cut and I hit a 3 wood -- the longest hole and me, the shortest pinch hitter, hitting a 3-wood off the tee trying to keep it out of trouble," Funk said with a grin.

Funk's round wasn't flawless, to be sure. But he managed to right the ship after he closed the front nine with three straight bogeys, including a particularly aggravating three-putt at the ninth hole, to turn in 2 over.

"I was pretty upset after No. 9 because I played the hole really well tee to green," Funk recalled. "The irony of the whole thing I was sitting on the putting green and got there early and knew exactly what those putts were doing because I saw everybody missing it to the right and people misreading it and nobody making the putt. I got up there and did the exact same thing."

Funk coaxed a 20-footer into the cup at the 10th hole, then countered a bogey at the 12th with two more birdies on the 15th and 17th. In between, he saved par from 15 feet and he barely missed another 10-footer for par at the 18th hole.

"Overall I'm satisfied and I'm actually surprised the scores (weren't lower)," he said. "The greens were softer today after that rain, and I thought some guys would get out there and get it today because it was a lot different today than when I was putting before the rain. The greens were like at Shinnecock before we even started.

"It's a tough golf course, it keeps coming at you and you make a little mistake and it can turn into a big mistake and that's what you try not to do out here."