Tiger Woods leads by 1 over Padraig Harrington!

Tiger and Padraig are at it again as they are paired together for the first 2 rounds of the PGA Championship at Hazeltine.

Woods had a flawless 5 under par 67 with birdies on three of the four par 5.He is the leader but Harrington is only 1 shot behind at-4 with 5 birdies of his own and a lone bogey at the 1st hole(his 10th as they started n the 10th tee).

The third man of the group is Rich Beem who won the PGA on this same course in 2002 in a memorable finish when Woods ended as the runner-up.He is at -1 after a good 71 on his 1st round.

Six players are T 3,among them Vijay Singh who is finding back his touch with the putter,and long hitter Spain’s Alvaro Quiros who can take advantage of this 7600+ yards golf course.

Can Woods keep the pace? Well, statistics are in his favor: the last four times he led after the 1st round of a major tournament he won, he also won the 2 times his opening round was bogey free.What does that do for confidence? He also is the best front-runner in the game and this is his last chance for a Major in 2009, so after he won the past two weeks who is going to take the fight to the world #1?

Padraig Harrington has hold his own on the first round and it looks that the catastrophic 16th hole last Sunday is forgotten; he could again be the most dangerous contender.

It’s only the first round but Tiger has made a statement and we know that his name at the top of the leaderboard intimidates his opponents more than they want to admit.

Let’s hope we’ll have a great battle for the title of the 91st PGA Championship at Hazeltine.

Check out the pairings and the betting lines at BetPhoenix.com Sportbook, a few bets make it more fun.