Not too many people gave Shiv Kapur a chance at the 2013 Open Championship.
Betting houses weren't giving him odds. (He was given 500-1 odds in some U.K. parlors.)
Yahoo! Sports didn't include him as a choice in their fantasy golf game, despite obviously being a part of the field.
Kapur gave himself a chance, however, to win in his second Open Championship start on Thursday. He shot 3-under 68 at Muirfield to finish Day 1 just two shots off the lead of Zach Johnson.
The lone Indian player in the field -- Kapur joked he wanted to be in the running for "low Indian" -- got off to an incredibly fast start. Kapur was 6 under par through his first seven holes. At the 10th, Kapur stumbled with a double bogey, and he dropped another shot at the 14th, but given his afternoon tee time, his score was outstanding.
“I’m still in a daze to be honest,” Kapur, 31, said. “I had my share of luck on the front nine but playing so late in the day was not easy. The wind did not die down as predicted and the greens were not getting any slower."
As the round progressed and the course continued to dry out further, Kapur hoped simply to survive all the way to his Friday morning tee time.
"Hopefully tomorrow, starting early, they will play a bit softer," he said. "They were too fast for me.”
The 210th-ranked player in the world is only playing in only his second major (he missed the cut at Hoylake in 2006), but he has a chance to have the highest finish ever by an Indian player in the Open. Countryman Jyoti Randhawa finished T-27 at the '04 Open.
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