AUGUSTA, Georgia // With his words and then his play, Lee Westwood shot down the notion Thursday that this Masters was a two-horse race.
On a busy opening day at Augusta National that featured mud, a little rain and a snowman on the final hole for Henrik Stenson, Westwood provided a steady hand Thursday with seven birdies for a 5-under 67 that gave him a one-shot lead.
It was the first time Westwood has led after the opening round of a major, though that was little comfort. Louis Oosthuizen made four birdies over the last five holes for a 68, while Peter Hanson of Sweden made six birdies for his 68. Bubba Watson, blasting tee shots with his pink driver, was among six players at 69.
Westwood had said it would be naive for anyone to think this major was only about Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.
Those two horses were happy to still be in the running.
Woods took two penalty shots, hit three tee shots that rattled the pines and was thrilled to make bogey on his last hole for a 72, the first time since 2008 that he failed to break par in the opening round of the Masters.
"I had some of the worst golf swings I've ever hit today," Woods said.
McIlroy opened with a double bogey, though his big moment was on the 10th hole. A year ago, that's where his Sunday collapse began with a hooked tee shot into the cabins for a triple bogey. This time, he pushed a 3-wood into the trees on the other side and managed a par.
"That was a bit of an improvement from the last time I played it," McIlroy said.
Better yet was a birdie-birdie finish, including a 15-foot putt from the fringe on the 18th that gave him a 71, making him one of 28 players who broke par and were within four shots of the lead.
"It was huge," McIlroy said. "I didn't feel like I had my best out there. To finish under par for the day, I'm very pleased."
Along with Woods smiling after a 72, three-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson was delighted with a 74. He sprayed tee shots all over the course, including one so far left on the 10th into bushes he didn't know existed that he never found his ball. Mickelson made a triple bogey there, then spent the rest of the back nine scrambling for his life.
He recounted all the bad shots, the missed opportunities, the triple bogey, and decided the glass was half full, almost spilling over.
"This is good news," Mickelson said. "Because if I can get hot tomorrow, I'm playing good enough to shoot 6 or 7 under, and I'll be right in it for the weekend. Fortunately, I didn't shoot myself out of it."
Luke Donald, the No. 1 player in the world, had a few nervous moments, and that was after he signed for a 75. When his card was sent to the scoring room to be entered into the computer, an official accidentally punched in a birdie 3 for the fifth hole, even though Donald three-putted for a 5. The leaderboard showed him with a 73.
It took about two hours to clear up the confusion.
"This place, if you are a little bit off, it can eat you up," Donald said.
Donald and Westwood are the only two players to be No. 1 without ever having won a major. Westwood is atop the list of the best who have never won a Grand Slam event - 36 wins around the world, formerly No. 1 in the world and a half-dozen close calls in the majors, including a runner-up finish at the Masters two years ago.
"I've come close," Westwood said. "I've won all there is to win other than a major championship. That's my primary focus and it's been a long time coming around since the PGA last year."
Westwood made his move on the front nine when he ran off four straight birdies, all of them inside 10 feet, including a difficult pitch from short of the par-5 eighth green that settled within tap-in range.
Despite the soft conditions from storms earlier in the week, the scoring wasn't as low as some thought. Westwood's caddie, Billy Foster, walked the course earlier in the day and sent back a scouting report.
"Billy had sent me a text saying that the pins were tough," Westwood said. "He used slightly more flowering language than that, but we'll stick to tough. So I knew it was a day for patience."
Stenson celebrated his 36th birthday with a 31 on the front nine, including eagles on both par 5s, and he was the only player to reach 6-under par during the round. It just didn't last.
He hooked his drive into the trees on the 18th, took two shots to get back to the fairway, sent a wedge over the green and took four shots to get down from there. He wound up with a quadruple-bogey 8 - known as a "snowman" in golf vernacular - which matched the highest score on the 18th hole in Masters history.
That dropped him to a 71, not bad considering his last two opening rounds at Augusta were an 80 and an 83, but still not what he wanted.
"You make a little mistake, and then you compound it with another one, and it just keeps on snowballing," Stenson said. "And I got the snowman in the end. What to do?"
Paul Lawrie made two eagles on the back nine to join the group at 69 that included Miguel Angel Jimenez, Edoardo Molinari, Ben Crane and Jason Dufner, who lost in a playoff at the PGA Championship last summer.
Only nine players managed to break 70, and the scoring was so bunched that only eight of the 96 players were 10 shots behind, the measure for making the cut on Friday.
"There's still a lot of world class players there and a lot of them playing well, and majors are hard to win as it is," Westwood said. "I'm going to have to play as good, if not better, than I did today to carry on in the position I'm in."
Woods had an inkling of what to expect. He was on his way to the putting green when he ducked into the clubhouse, glanced at the computer and was surprised to see so few birdies. Once he teed off, it all made sense.
The pins were tucked in some of the tougher positions at the Masters, especially for the opening round, such as a right pin on the par-3 12th typically only seen on a Sunday.
"It was what I expected throughout the week, but maybe not on Thursday," Zach Johnson said after a 70.
And it sure wasn't easy getting at some of those pins with splotches of mud on the ball. Keegan Bradley had to deal with it on the opening hole. His shot went left of the bunker and he made double bogey. Steve Stricker was trying to lay up on the par-5 eighth hole when mud on his ball caused it to veer sharply to the left and into the pines. He made bogey.
Kyle Stanley was asked where he had to cope with mud.
"One, two, five, 10, 11, 13, 15," he said. "That was it."
Woods had other issues.
With thousands of fans lining the first fairway, they looked toward the sky to find the flight of his ball and figured out where it went by the sound of a hard, hollow knock striking Georgia pine. On the next hole, he pulled his tee shot toward the creek for a penalty shot. In both cases, he escaped with par by making putts of 8 and 5 feet.
But there was no escaping the finish. A tee shot to the left on the 17th left him no angle to get on the green, so Woods hit into the front bunker and failed to save par. And on the 18th, another wild hook went into the trees. Woods had to take a penalty stroke to get relief, and only a delicate pitch left of the green allowed him to save bogey.
Woods usually talks about the shots that got away. This time, there weren't many.
"Today I squeezed a lot out of that round," he said. "I just felt my way around today. I know how to play this golf course. I think it's just understanding what I need to do."
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
Torque: 780Nm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: From Dh1,350,000
On sale: Available for preorder now
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Lamsa
Founder: Badr Ward
Launched: 2014
Employees: 60
Based: Abu Dhabi
Sector: EdTech
Funding to date: $15 million
SPECS
Engine: Two-litre four-cylinder turbo
Power: 235hp
Torque: 350Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Price: From Dh167,500 ($45,000)
On sale: Now
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
FA Cup semi-finals
Saturday: Manchester United v Tottenham Hotspur, 8.15pm (UAE)
Sunday: Chelsea v Southampton, 6pm (UAE)
Matches on Bein Sports
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 194hp at 5,600rpm
Torque: 275Nm from 2,000-4,000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Price: from Dh155,000
On sale: now
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Revibe%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Hamza%20Iraqui%20and%20Abdessamad%20Ben%20Zakour%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20UAE%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EIndustry%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Refurbished%20electronics%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunds%20raised%20so%20far%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20%2410m%20%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFlat6Labs%2C%20Resonance%20and%20various%20others%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
BUNDESLIGA FIXTURES
Saturday (UAE kick-off times)
Cologne v Union Berlin (5.30pm)
Fortuna Dusseldorf v Borussia Dortmund (5.30pm)
Hertha Berlin v Eintracht Frankfurt (5.30pm)
Paderborn v Werder Bremen (5.30pm)
Wolfsburg v Freiburg (5.30pm)
Bayern Munich v Borussia Monchengladbach (8.30pm)
Sunday
Mainz v Augsburg (5.30pm)
Schalke v Bayer Leverkusen (8pm)
JOKE'S%20ON%20YOU
%3Cp%3EGoogle%20wasn't%20new%20to%20busting%20out%20April%20Fool's%20jokes%3A%20before%20the%20Gmail%20%22prank%22%2C%20it%20tricked%20users%20with%20%3Ca%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Farchive.google%2Fmentalplex%2F%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%3Emind-reading%20MentalPlex%20responses%3C%2Fa%3E%20and%20said%3Ca%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Farchive.google%2Fpigeonrank%2F%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%3E%20well-fed%20pigeons%20were%20running%20its%20search%20engine%20operations%3C%2Fa%3E%20.%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EIn%20subsequent%20years%2C%20they%20announced%20home%20internet%20services%20through%20your%20toilet%20with%20its%20%22%3Ca%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Farchive.google%2Ftisp%2Finstall.html%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%3Epatented%20GFlush%20system%3C%2Fa%3E%22%2C%20made%20us%20believe%20the%20Moon's%20surface%20was%20made%20of%20cheese%20and%20unveiled%20a%20dating%20service%20in%20which%20they%20called%20founders%20Sergey%20Brin%20and%20Larry%20Page%20%22%3Ca%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Farchive.google%2Fromance%2Fpress.html%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%3EStanford%20PhD%20wannabes%3C%2Fa%3E%20%22.%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EBut%20Gmail%20was%20all%20too%20real%2C%20purportedly%20inspired%20by%20one%20%E2%80%93%20a%20single%20%E2%80%93%20Google%20user%20complaining%20about%20the%20%22poor%20quality%20of%20existing%20email%20services%22%20and%20born%20%22%3Ca%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fgooglepress.blogspot.com%2F2004%2F04%2Fgoogle-gets-message-launches-gmail.html%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%3Emillions%20of%20M%26amp%3BMs%20later%3C%2Fa%3E%22.%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
No more lice
Defining head lice
Pediculus humanus capitis are tiny wingless insects that feed on blood from the human scalp. The adult head louse is up to 3mm long, has six legs, and is tan to greyish-white in colour. The female lives up to four weeks and, once mature, can lay up to 10 eggs per day. These tiny nits firmly attach to the base of the hair shaft, get incubated by body heat and hatch in eight days or so.
Identifying lice
Lice can be identified by itching or a tickling sensation of something moving within the hair. One can confirm that a person has lice by looking closely through the hair and scalp for nits, nymphs or lice. Head lice are most frequently located behind the ears and near the neckline.
Treating lice at home
Head lice must be treated as soon as they are spotted. Start by checking everyone in the family for them, then follow these steps. Remove and wash all clothing and bedding with hot water. Apply medicine according to the label instructions. If some live lice are still found eight to 12 hours after treatment, but are moving more slowly than before, do not re-treat. Comb dead and remaining live lice out of the hair using a fine-toothed comb.
After the initial treatment, check for, comb and remove nits and lice from hair every two to three days. Soak combs and brushes in hot water for 10 minutes.Vacuum the floor and furniture, particularly where the infested person sat or lay.
Courtesy Dr Vishal Rajmal Mehta, specialist paediatrics, RAK Hospital
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League quarter-final, second leg (first-leg score):
Manchester City (0) v Tottenham Hotspur (1), Wednesday, 11pm UAE
Match is on BeIN Sports
