Tiger battles knee injury

Updated 09.24 Fri Jun 13 2008

Keywords: mickelson, scott, hicks, torrey pines, golf, us open, knee injury, tiger woods

Tiger Woods is struggling with his knee after shooting a first-round 72 at the US Open.

Meanwhile, while most of the attention ahead of the first round was trained on the returning Woods and playing partners Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott, Lee Westwood quietly outshone them all.

Tiger Woods signed for a 72 on his comeback from two months of injury-imposed absence.

Ryder Cup star Westwood finished the opening day at Torrey Pines with a better score than anyone in the feature group of the day and is one of a small group who are under par, having shot a one-under round of 70.

It was a steady round for Westwood that featured two birides, a bogey and nine consecutive pars coming in.

The 35-year-old was excited about his prospects in the competition and gave an extra thank you to the United States Golf Association, which manipulated the pairings this year and put the top three players in the world in the same group.

Westwood, for one, would not mind seeing them trio matched up in every major.

Westwood said: "It was great. I want to thank the USGA for putting them together. It was a lovely, nice peaceful day out there. I think they should do it more often.

"You could hear the cheers and you could see the sort of migration of people around the golf course and we were all just watching.

"It was like wandering around on a Sunday morning. It was fabulous."

He added: "This is as good as I've ever seen a US Open golf course set up. I think that it's well documented that the USGA held their hands up when they set the golf course up on Sunday at Shinnecock (in 2004). Last year for me was a little too tough as well, extremely when you missed the fairways. But it's perfect."

Westwood was not the only player who found conditions favorable as Justin Hicks and Kevin Streelman combined to make 13 birdies and share the lead with three-under 68s entering today's second round.

Hicks went out in the early groups and had a rollercoaster front nine.

Starting on the tenth, he had six birdies and three bogeys on his front nine and he added a birdie and a bogey coming in.