Marcus Fraser leads a day of firsts for Olympic golf

RIO DE JANEIRO Aug 11 Britain’s Justin Rose celebrated golf’s return to the Olympics after 112 years in spectacular style on Thursday, carding the Games’ first ever hole-in-one before sending a message to players who had declined to take part: “They’re missing out”.

Stenson was in the last group and faced the strongest wind, but the Swede who set a major championship scoring record at Royal Troon dropped only one shot.

Of the Americans, only Matt Kuchar managed to get in red numbers, and his 2-under-par 69 left him tied for 11th, 6 strokes back of tournament leader Marcus Fraser from Australia. I think Adilson said it all there – the relief on his face when he hit a good drive was a lot more than for a normal event. It didn’t get much better from there.

“It’s called golf and it’s very tough, ” said Watson, who birdied the last hole but had a double-bogey on No. 10.

“As golfers, we often get on a good, two, three or four-week roll where everything just clicks and I feel like my time is coming”. “The greens were a little bit quicker, too. To hear my name announced as an Olympian and to go tee off, there were a few more butterflies than I anticipated”.

With the top four players in the world not competing, the IOC may decide to remove golf from the Olympic schedule after the 2020 Games in Toyko, but International Golf Federation president Peter Dawson remained confident that would not be the case.

A further four birdies then enabled Fraser to put open up a healthy advantage going into the second round on Friday. The result could be that we see some slow starters come right back into the tournament as play continues.