British Open Scores 2012: Dissecting the Current Leaderboard

The 2012 Open Championship is underway at Royal Lytham & St Anne's, with plenty of surprises and intriguing storylines that will make this one of the most noteworthy weekends of the PGA Tour season. 

While everything that we are seeing right now is very likely to change by the time we get to Sunday, it is nice to have golf action to talk about. 

Specifically, we are going to look at what is going on with the leaderboard right now. 

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Leader: Adam Scott (-6)

Scott has built a good career on the PGA Tour. He has eight career victories in his 12-year career, but majors have never been his biggest strength. That is not to say that he has been terrible—just unable to break through in the big one. 

Even if it is just for one day, Scott is putting on a clinic at Royal Lytham & St Anne's Course on Thursday. He finished the first round with a stellar six-under par 64, holding a one-stroke lead over Zach Johnson and Paul Lawrie, and two strokes ahead of Tiger Woods at the time of this writing. 

As long as Scott doesn't get bogged down by the magnitude of the stage, I see no reason to think he can't at least stay in contention all weekend. He has been close in recent years, finishing tied for second at the Masters in 2011 and a solid 15th place finish at the U.S. Open last month. 

Tiger Watch

As briefly mentioned in the previous hit, Woods is off to a strong start at the Open Championship. With all eyes locked on him at this tournament, it was imperative that he got off to a strong start. 

In fact, Woods has done more than that. He is just three shots behind leader Adam Scott at the time of this writing. You know the last thing any of the golfers wanted to see was Woods hit the ground running. 

Woods is as good a frontrunner as anyone in sports. If he is able to move into the lead after Friday's second round, watch for the floodgates to open.

He is never going to be the player he once was, but even at 75-80 percent of what he was is better than almost everyone else on the Tour. 

Potential Surprises

If you are looking for names who won''t necessarily win the Open Championship but can remain in contention, Sergio Garcia, John Daly and Y.E. Yang have done a good job at the start. There is a long way to go, and we know that these things are so fluid, but confidence is the key to this game. 

Daly is always going to be worth watching just because of who he is. If he can contain his big drives and keep the ball on the fairway, he can hang around on the leaderboard and play through the weekend. 

Garcia, as we all know, is this close to imploding at any moment. He loves to tease the crowd on occasion before falling hard and fast. Still, a one-over par in the first round is nothing to sneeze about. He may not place on the leaderboards, but you have to feel good for him when he can put it all together every now and then. 

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