TULSA, Okla. – For the first eight holes of his opening round at the PGA Championship yesterday at Southern Hills, Tiger Woods looked as if he was going to be well on his way to winning his first major of the year.

But Woods’ smooth start derailed and he finished the day with a 1-over-par 71, giving away four strokes in his final 11 holes. After three birdies in his first six holes and two terrific par saves from trouble on his seventh and eighth holes of the day (Nos. 16 and 17), Woods bogeyed his ninth hole (No. 18) and shot 3-over on the front.

“I don’t know; I felt like I hit the ball better than my score indicates, which is good,” Woods said.

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Greg Bisconti, the assistant pro at St. Andrews in Hastings-on-Hudson, shot a disappointing 12-over-par 82. At last year’s PGA Championship at Medinah, he shot what he called a magical opening-round 70 before missing the cut the next day with a 78.

“I’m just not hitting it off the tee,” said Bisconti, who hit four of 14 fairways. “On any other golf course I’m sure I could have scored a lot of pars. But out here, you miss the fairway and it’s bogey or worse.”

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Phil Mickelson finished with a 3-over 73 and lamented about his putting, particularly a miss on No. 12.

“I haven’t been putting well and that miss on 12 took some energy out [of the round],” Mickelson said. “I’m playing better than I’m scoring.”

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First-round leader Graeme Storm is vying to become the fourth first-time major winner this year, joining Zach Johnson (Masters), Angel Cabrera (U.S. Open) and Padraig Harrington (British Open).

Since the Masters began in 1934, there’ve been three seasons when the majors were swept by newcomers. It happened in 1959 (Art Wall in the Masters, Billy Casper in the U.S. Open, Gary Player in the British and Bob Rosburg in the PGA), 1969 (George Archer, Orville Moody, Tony Jacklin and Raymond Floyd) and 2003 (Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel).

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Cabrera, who shot an 11-over-par 81, took a 10 on the par-3 sixth hole after hitting his first two shots out of bounds. Johnson shot 74 and Harrington shot 69. The three 2007 major winners are playing together for the first two rounds.

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Sergio Garcia, who nearly won the British Open last month, had it going yesterday as he got it to 2-under-par. But he faded late with bogeys on the final two holes.

“Well, just a shame, those last two bogeys on the last two,” he said.

Garcia said he hasn’t forgotten about the British Open, where he lost a one-shot lead on the final hole.

“No, you don’t forget it. On a scale of 100, there were probably 95 positive things and five negative things, so you can’t forget about a week that is so positive.”