O’Hair leads thanks to Tiger’s help

Sean O’Hair is leading by 1 shot at East Lake with a 66 four under par first round.Currently in 7th place on the Fedex Cup standings he needs help from Tiger Woods to capture the Cup and he got some from the World #1 in form of putting tips when they practiced together on the back nine of East Lake on Wednesday.O’Hair sought some advice from one of the best putters ever and Tiger obliged. This,at least partly,might be the reason O’Hair is leading by one over Stewart Cink,Padraig Harrington,and guess who? Tiger Woods at 3 under par.

Woods suggested that O’Hair should open the face of the putter on the way back so he could release the blade through the ball. “I believe in what he said ...”said O’Hair “Getting advice from good players is awesome,but getting it it from basically the best of all time is pretty cool.” And added “I mean,I am his competition,for him to help me out like he did was very classy,I thought.”

It paid off as O’Hair built a brief 6-shot lead on Tiger when he got to -5 at the 12th hole.He then made 2 bogeys for one birdie and Tiger,after getting back to level par with a birdie at 9,made 3 more birdies at 12, 13 and 15 to get within 1 shot.

Despite the great amount of rain which fell on East Lake last week the greens are very firm and the combination of soft fairways and hard fast greens has made scoring difficult.Only 8 players are under par after the first round with Lucas Glover in 5th place at -2 and Steve Marino,Retief Goosen,Dustin Johnson T6 at -1.

Of the top 5 in the Fedex standings who would take the Cup with a win this week only Woods is under par.Steve Stricker and Zach Johnson are close at level par but Jim Furyk at +2 and Heath Slocum at +3 have lost a lot of ground.

At the moment Sean O’Hair and Padraig Harrington are the clear challengers for the #1 in the Fedex standings Tiger Woods.However there is a lot of golf left and plenty of drama to be expected in THE TOUR Championship before someone claims the 2009 Fedex Cup.

For the second round on Friday the leader Sean O’Hair is paired with East Lake’s member and resident Stewart Cink and Tiger Woods will have another round with Padraig Harrington as companion and rival.

Check out the pairings and the lines at BetPhoen