Mediate winds up leading the parade

SOUTHPORT, England -- The guy figured to be here for a cameo, little more.

Play a little golf, take a ceremonial lap or two around Royal Birkdale so people could see he was back on his feet a month after being knocked out by Tiger Woods in a playoff for the U.S. Open and be home in time to watch the final round from the easy chair in his living room.

Instead, creaky, chronically aching, 45-year-old Rocco Mediate is leading the British Open.

"It's a hard course, it's a long course, it's windy. It was cold this morning. I'm old. You know, there's a few things stacked against you," Mediate said after a 1-under 69 left him tied with Graeme McDowell and Robert Allenby atop the leaderboard.

"It was just one of those rounds," he said. "It was just up and down, up and down, and a couple of birdies, and here we are. I would have been ecstatic with 73 or 74 today."

Turns out there might be a country for old men after all. Or maybe just older golfers, since among those hot on Mediate's trail were Greg Norman, 53, and Bart Bryant, 45. It hardly figured on a day so wet and windy that the birds did plenty of walking and 17 of the 18 holes played over par. The average score was 76.

"A lot of times you've just got to survive," he said. "I think you'll probably hear that from everybody. But I made pretty much every single putt I could have made today. I don't think that I really missed one. Actually, I did on the first hole, and I was very disappointed in myself."

The feeling didn't last long. Mediate shoehorned all three bogeys from his round into the first five holes and erased them with four birdies the rest of the way. At the 17th, where a hastily rebuilt, humpty-dumpty green had just about everybody else pulling out their hair, the only time Mediate stepped on the putting surface was to pull his ball out of the hole. After dumping his 3-iron approach into the right rough short of the green, he punched a short wedge into the left rough behind it, then simply chipped in from there.

"A joke," Mediate said with a shrug. "I'm trying to make 5 and it goes in."

A moment later, he added almost wistfully, "There's a certain person who you all know who isn't here who does that a lot."

That would be Woods, of course, whose absence may do more to determine the winner than the weather, brutal rough and zany bounces on these seaside links combined. It's given hope to a few players who have spent most of their careers in his long shadow, but curiously, Mediate isn't one of them. Going toe-to-toe with Tiger at Torrey Pines was one of the most exhilarating days in his life. What helps keep him going is the idea that it could happen again.

"I don't think there's a situation that I can be in other than on that Monday against Tiger to feel the feelings that I did," he said. "I want a chance to go in and see if I can handle it all again and maybe do one better.

"I think it's done nothing but make me better, even though I did not win the golf tournament. Some people," he added to laughter, "do forget that."

Mediate can't, but not because he came so tantalizingly close to winning his first major. The fact is he suspected as recently as the start of the 2007 season that he might be done. Tired of seeing surgeons and worn out by the chronic pain in his back and hips, Mediate put on a headset and did some work for The Golf Channel as a possible segue into a second career.

Then a mutual friend introduced him to a physical therapist named Cindi Hilfman. Instead of the four or five "adjustments" Mediate required weekly from his chiropractors to stay upright, she designed a workout regimen that stressed strengthening the rest of his body. Mediate bought into the idea when, a few weeks after they started working together, he finished second at Bay Hill.

She still tweaks his back or his muscles when required, such as the 11th hole Thursday, when Mediate walked off the green, lay down in the rough on his side, and Hilfman held his spine steady so he could rotate his hip muscle and get it back into a comfortable spot.

"It makes a popping sound sometimes," Hilfman laughed," and when people hear it, they go, 'Whoo!'

"Rocco's no spring chicken, but compared to what he used to do to try and play, this has worked out well."

Once Mediate began believing his back was strong enough, battling Woods down the stretch and into overtime at the U.S. Open convinced him his heart was stout enough to keep playing, too.

"I don't know, I think I still have one of these [majors] in me. Whether it's this week or this month, or next year, whatever. I don't feel like I'm on my way out. I feel like I just got a new -- it's just starting again. I feel that way," Mediate said. "Whether it happens or not, I really don't -- it's almost like I don't really care.

"I just want to get in the situation to see what I really have. That is what you want to test."

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press.