Thursday, Jul. 24, 2008

Norman warm and ready

TROON, Scotland -- Greg Norman used last week's British Open as a warmup and almost made history. The warmup over, he is now setting his sights on the Senior British Open.

Leading the tournament at Royal Birkdale with nine holes to play, the 53-year-old Australian was on course to become the oldest winner of a major, but finished six shots behind Padraig Harrington in a tie for third.

"Now, my expectations are good," Norman said Wednesday at Troon.

"I like the golf course. So now I've warmed up, basically. OK, so now I've got to step up and, hopefully, I can do that over the next four or five days."

For the first two rounds today and Friday, Norman will play in the same group as Tom Watson, winner of five Opens and three of the past five Senior British Opens, and Sandy Lyle as he bids for his first seniors title.

Because of his various business interests, plus playing tennis for fun with new wife Chris Evert, Norman picks and chooses his seniors events and this is just his fourth. He finished third at this tournament three years ago at Royal Aberdeen, and tied for sixth at this year's Senior PGA Championship at Oak Hill, Rochester.

Norman plans to play in the Senior U.S. Championship in Colorado Springs, Colo., next week, and said Wednesday he has until today to decide whether to accept an invitation to play in the final regular-tour major of the year, the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills outside Detroit Aug. 7-10.

"That's four weeks in a row and I already have something else on my schedule then," Norman said Wednesday. "I'm going back tonight to talk about it over dinner."

He says he doesn't want to play too many tournaments after undergoing several operations to repair long-term injuries.

"This morning I woke up stiff and I had to do a bit more stretching," he said. "And I hadn't even hit a lot of balls yesterday. So that's always in the back of my head."

Lyle, who has a British Open title as well as the 1988 Masters, was lambasted by the media at Royal Birkdale when he walked off the course after completing half of the opening round at 11 over.

The Scot on Wednesday explained his early exit, saying a sore and numb left hand forced him to retire after just 10 holes.

Watson said of Troon's 7,064-yard par-71 links course, "It doesn't look like they're taking much pity on us old people. ... It's going to be a very long and difficult golf course."

CANADIAN OPEN -- Jim Furyk has his sights set high at rain-soaked Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ontario, in his bid for a third consecutive Canadian Open title.

Coming off a fifth-place tie in the bump-and-run British Open, Furyk has adjusted his ball flight skyward to take advantage of the soft conditions on the course saturated by nearly 8 inches of rain in five days.

"This is definitely a golf course where you want to bring the ball in high into a lot of these greens, coming off a week where I didn't hit it higher than about head high for four days," Furyk said before the latest round of heavy rain left today's scheduled 7 a.m. start in jeopardy. "So it's different, but I just want to slowly get my feel and my rhythm back and get the ball in the air."

Stephen Ames also is looking up after tying for seventh at Royal Birkdale.

"I've gone from a 10-foot high ball flight to a 120-foot high ball flight," said Ames, a naturalized Canadian citizen from Trinidad & Tobago.

At No. 10 in the world ranking, Furyk is the top player in an event hampered by a tough spot in the schedule after the British Open and before the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and PGA Championship.

LPGA -- Annika Sorenstam is determined her final year on the LPGA Tour will not become a sentimental journey. Yet she might make an exception at the Evian Masters this weekend in Evian-Les-Bains, France, when tournament officials plan to show their affection by naming part of the course in her honor.

The 37-year-old Swede with 72 career victories plans to retire at the end of the season to marry and start a family. Sorenstam says the Evian Masters has always been close to her heart.

"Evian is just an amazing place," Sorenstam said Wednesday. "It's so beautiful. My parents always come here. I bring other family members. It's just a lot more relaxed than other tournaments. So, this event I'll certainly miss more than other tournaments."

A section of the course named "Annika's Place" will be a constant reminder of the two-time Evian champion.

The event boasts total prize money of $3.25 million -- matching the U.S. Women's Open -- and is a centerpiece at the stylish five-star resort hotel. The course is set on a hillside near Lake Geneva and across from Switzerland, with French Alpine peaks stretching off in the distance.

The tournament also includes Lorena Ochoa, who took Sorenstam's No. 1 ranking last year and has six victories so far. She tops the money list at more than $2 million.

Sorenstam won the Evian event in 2000 -- when it debuted on the LPGA Tour -- and again in 2002. Ochoa has never won at Evian, finishing third three times and runner-up to Paula Creamer in 2005. Natalie Gulbis is defending the title she won in a playoff against Jeong Jang.