Sydney - Tiger Woods delighted fans Thursday by taking a share of the lead at 2-under Thursday, halfway through the opening round at the Australian Masters. Spectators were two-deep at the tape before the sun rose over Melbourne's Kingston Heath course to see the world's best golfer set out for an elusive Australian victory.
More than 20,000 people hold tickets to watch the 33-year-old play his first tournament round in Australia in 11 years. All 100,000 tickets for the four-day contest sold out within hours after confirmation that the 14-time major champion had accepted appearance money of 3 million US dollars.
Woods is favoured to win, with Australia's 2006 US Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, the world's 12th ranked player, tipped to be runner-up.
"He's clearly the favourite here, but the clear favourite doesn't always win," Ogilvy said. "There are quite a few local guys who have played this style of golf more often, know this course a little bit better."
Woods went out onto the par-72 course in the company of two former champions, titleholder Rod Pampling and three-time winner Craig Parry.
Betting company TAB Sportsbet said that more than half of all the bets it had taken on the tournament were for Woods, with one keen punter plonking down 100,000 Australian dollars (92,000 US dollars) on the US golfing superstar breaking his Australian duck.
"We are holding three times more money this year - a day before the tournament - than we did last year," TAB Sportsbet's Gary Davies said on the eve of competition.
"We have brought out a whole lot of different Tiger bets - Tiger versus the field, him against the top six Aussies."
A bet likely to be lost is the 200 Australian dollars on Woods missing the cut. He has been world No 1 for 231 weeks and earlier this week declared his love of the short and sandy Melbourne courses, where guile is more important than grunt.
"We don't get a chance to play on golf courses like this, and it's a shame more people don't design golf courses like this," Woods said. "You don't need them to be brutally long to be tricky and difficult."
