Yet at par-72 venues Woods has won six out of nine including

Yet at par-72 venues, Woods has won six out of nine, including three at Augusta.Par is relative and what may be more of a factor is that some of those par-70 courses, like Southern Hills for the US Open last year, are tight and finicky layouts that do not suit Woods so well. If the Black course plays like Congressional (one yard shorter and also a par-70) then the big-hitters will be prominent, although last year’s US PGA at the Atlanta Athletic Club, also a yard shorter than Bethpage, produced the (highly skilled) lay-up merchant David Toms as a winner.If conditions are favourable, some have forecast record low scoring as the greens, designed with the quantity of play in mind, are generally flat. But Woods said: “Anyone who thinks the scoring is going to be in double-digits is crazy.”Montgomerie departs for another crack at a US Open boosted by improved form and the fact that no one has local knowledge. There are 18 Europeans in the field, with Luke Donald, the young Englishman in his rookie season on the US Tour, among those who qualified last week.

Greg Norman also qualified, which allowed him to get one over Nick Faldo (who received a special exemption) when the Shark said he was pleased he had not had to ask for an invitation.. If anyone doubts David Richards’ commitment to turning round the fortunes of the BAR Honda team – very much under the spotlight here thanks to lead driver Jacques Villeneuve – you need only look at the lengths to which the team went to prepare two heavily revised new cars for the French-Canadian and his team-mate Olivier Panis to race this weekend. The logistics of running two separate, simultaneous efforts are one of the reasons why F1 costs what it does. Winning – or just competing – does not come cheap.Yet, when Panis and Villeneuve rewarded all the effort with the seventh and ninth fastest times after first practice here on Friday, the former champion was the first to play down expectations of a much-needed upturn in performance. “Yeah,” he said laconically, “we end up being quick on Friday, but by taking fuel out so it looks good.”This might not be quite what Richards, 50 last week and already highly successful in the sport both as a rally co-driver and more recently as the mastermind behind the World Rally Championship-winning Prodrive team, wanted to hear. But Villeneuve went on to say that he believes that the changes to the car are a genuine improvement “They feel good, they definitely feel good.

I think it’s the first time in four years where you feel there’s an improvement on the car, so that is a very nice thing. But I think it will be very, very difficult for us to be in the top 10 tomorrow because I don’t think we are that competitive.”BAR’s trend continued on Saturday morning, much to the delight of local scribes. But again Villeneuve played things down prior to qualifying, the first time in any GP weekend that all of the cars run with directly comparable tyre choices, fuel loads and aerodynamic set-ups. “Of course there will be some extra pressure now because people think we are competitive because we had a good Friday, so I expect a little bit of disappointment for them. But it’s great that the crowd is still positive after four very bad years. There is a little bit of family feeling with the fans here and I think that is what has helped keep everybody motivated.