Golf-course hecklers, as a rule, grow considerably braver after the bars have been open for a few hours, which may explain why Scott Hoch (7:40 a.m. tee time) and Tiger Woods (9:55) were able to get around Royal Birkdale without incident yesterday.

Between Woods's prominence and Hoch's well-recorded Anglophobia, the two Americans would have seemed the most obvious targets had the British crowds opted to exact tribute for the rude behaviour accorded Colin Montgomerie at last month's US Open, but Hoch went all but ignored, and by the day's end Woods's five under-par 65 had made him the darling of the Open crowd.

Taunted by shouts of "Go Home, Monty" at San Francisco's Olympic Club in June, Montgomerie experienced a week in which his bad shots were applauded and, on at least one occasion, his good ones greeted by a derisive "Nice shot, Tubby"

"I've had happier weeks, I must admit," Montgomerie had summed up his US Open experience. "It's all to do with the Ryder Cup, of course. I seem to be blamed for Europe's winning."

"If he thinks that was just about the Ryder Cup he's not being honest with himself," said Hoch, after shooting a stress-free ("except that my putting sucked") 73 yesterday.

Indeed, the roots of this nasty little exercise in transatlantic diplomacy go back considerably further than Valderrama. There may have been other ugly episodes, but the first within my own recollection dates back 11 years, to the final round of the 1987 Open at Muirfield, where Nick Faldo, in search of his first major victory, had battled neck-and-neck with American Paul Azinger.

With Faldo, who had made 18 consecutive pars that day, safely in the clubhouse, Azinger came to the final hole needing a birdie to force a play-off. When his approach shot to the 18th landed in a greenside bunker, the stands positively exploded with cheers of delight that might have accompanied an England goal in the World Cup. It was a gesture so unsporting that a few moments later Sir Michael Bonallack felt obliged to apologise even as he presented the claret jug to Faldo.

Two years later, having bested Greg Norman and Wayne Grady in a four-hole play-off to win at Royal Troon, Mark Calcavecchia did his best to fuel the tensions by declaiming, at the following morning's press conference, on the alleged superiority of American golf. By way of example, Calcavecchia pointed out that the Bell's Scottish Open the previous week had been won by an American (Michael Allen) "who isn't even good enough to play on our Tour."

Then, when the US Ryder Cup team arrived at the Belfry a few months later, Captain Raymond Floyd announced that he had brought with him "the 12 best golfers in the world," a boast so outrageous that it left his European counterpart, Tony Jacklin , gasping for air.

"What does that make Ballesteros?" asked Jacklin. "Thirteenth?"

The "world's 12 best golfers" (thanks in no small part to Christy O'Connor jnr) left the Cup behind them, a signal for tensions to escalate at Kiawah in 1991, although some of the alleged harassment there was largely in the imaginations of the visitors. (Note to Monty: when an American fan shouts out "You Da Man!" at the top of a fellow's backswing, he is not necessarily mean-spirited. More likely it is a gesture of well-intentioned stupidity.)

By 1993 the Belfry crowds were openly cheering each American ball (and there were more than a few) to find a water hazard.

In the subsequent five years in which he emerged as Europe's best player, Montgomerie, to be sure, has at times made himself a lightning rod for unwelcome crowd attention, partly because of his brutal honesty in speaking his mind and partly because of an on-course demeanor that caused his colleagues to dub him "Mrs Doubtfire."

And Montgomerie's proclivity for frankness tends to make him a relatively slow-moving target. On the eve of the Ryder Cup matches in Spain last year, he granted interviews, over the course of which he made several observations almost guaranteed to alienate the American fans.

Among his comments were

(a) that Woods's game was not really suited to the Valderrama course;

(b) that Brad Faxon's golf game would probably suffer from his ongoing divorce and custody battle;

(c) that he hoped the Ryder Cup came down to a final-day match between himself and Tiger.

Monty also undiplomatically joked about the Ryder Cup coming down to a final-day match in which Hoch would face a four-foot putt, a reminder that Hoch had missed one of just that length to hand Faldo a Masters title years earlier.

If Monty has an American counterpart as a whipping boy, it would seem to be Hoch, who in truth would prefer to be spending this week in Madison, Mississippi, playing the Deposit Guaranty Classic, and came to England only at the insistence of Yonex , his equipment sponsor. Hoch last played the Open at St Andrews in 1995, after which he labelled golfdom's hallowed ground "a piece of spit," and, citing bad hotels, bad food, and ill-mannered people, had until this year steadfastly refused to return.

As events of last September would prove, Valderrama was not an ideal course for Woods, and Montgomerie's observations about Faxon had a basis in his own experience: he had seen the toll similar circumstances had taken on David Feherty's golf career. And didn't wishing for a mano-a-mano confrontation with Tiger represent the sort of competitive urge every great golfer is supposed to feel?

As a final irony, Scott Hoch did face a four-foot tiddler for the match, on the final day, and against Montgomerie. Since the Ryder Cup was already over, Ballesteros directed Monty to concede the putt, which (none too happily, we suspect) he did.

Just as the bright and windless day tamed Royal Birkdale, Woods's barrage of birdies spawned a wave of Tigermania that swept over West Lancashire yesterday. The nearest anyone came to disrupting Tiger all day was when a voice bellowed "Get in the hole," seemingly at the top of his backswing, as he struck a delicate chip from behind the 18th green.

It would appear that a temporary truce, at least, has been struck.

"Don't get me wrong," said Hoch. "Monty should not have been harassed in San Francisco, but if he was, it had as much as anything to do with the personal things he had said about certain players, myself included. As far as I'm concerned, it's over with."

The Birkdale fans may yet have the final say on that.