His day could have been much worse except for a tee shot that caromed off a tree and into the fairway on the second hole, and a big hook on the third that hit the tire of a golf cart and stayed in play.
Hunter Mahan's tee shot on the 15th hole got stuck high up in a tree, leading to double bogey, but then he rolled in an eagle putt from off the 16th green.
Two years later, in 2008, then-U.S. captain Paul Azinger was determined to make similar changes, including having a tree limb cut down after one team member found it was disrupting his tee shot on the 16th hole.
He could have been sitting alone atop the leader-board if his tee-shot on 13 hadn't ended up on the pine straw and behind a tree 10 yards outside the fairway.