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Woods starts Open defence alongside Faldo

17/07/2006

Tiger Woods will tee off the defence of his Open title at Hoylake at 14:09 BST on Thursday alongside Britain's leading major winner Nick Faldo and Shingo Katayama of Japan.

The American world number one has played little golf over the past two months following the death of his father but he is sure to be centre of attention again when he bids to retain his title.

He finished in tied second in last week's Cialis Western Open and he has admitted he is starting to return to form.

"I made some great improvement on the range this week, working all those hours out there and working on all those things I need to hone to be more consistent," he said.

"This week it really showed. I started hitting the ball really flush and really controlling my flight."

The 135th staging of the Open Championship will be formally commenced at 06:30 BST on Thursday by the trio of Peter Hedblom, Steve Elkington and Jerry Kelly.

Sergio Garcia, the leading European, lines up alongside Paul Casey and Fred Couples in the seventh tee time at 07:36 BST, while the ninth trio sees 2002 champion Ernie Els and English star Luke Donald tee off with amateur Edoardo Molinari.

European Tour order of merit leader David Howell, who is currently ranked tenth in the world and is England's best hope of glory, tees off at 08:20 BST alongside Vijay Singh and Zach Johnson.

Colin Montgomerie, second last year behind Woods, tees off at 08:58 BST alongside John Daly and Stuart Appleby.

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