Sydney - Tiger Woods delighted fans Thursday by sharing a 6-under clubhouse lead after the opening round of the Australian Masters. Woods occupied the top of the leaderboard with Australian James Nitties, who also carded a 66 on Melbourne's par-72 Kingston Heath course.
Spectators were 20-deep at the tape as the world's best golfer set out for an elusive Australian victory with a blistering back nine, in which he birdied four holes before a bogey on the par-4 ninth blotted his scorecard.
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 of the 14-time major champion accepting 3 million US dollars to come to play.
Woods is favoured to win with Australian Geoff Ogilvy, the world's 12th-ranked player, tipped to chase him home.
Ogilvy was 1-under through 16 holes, giving the 2006 US Open champion lots to do to catch the leaders.
"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 sun-drenched course in the company of two former champions, titleholder Rod Pampling and three-time winner Craig Parry.
Betting company TAB Sportsbet said more than half of all bets 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 number 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."
