The Open 2012: Paul Lawrie keeps his composure with opening-round of 65 despite Matt Kuchar's call of nature And yet, many stranger things would happen over the course of the Scotsman's round. Consider, for example, the remarkable fact that by the time he reached the seventh tee, Lawrie, already three under par, had taken just three putts. He had chipped in at the third and the fifth, single-putted the first, second and fourth, and putted from off the green - which does not register in the official statistics as a putt - at the sixth. And there was more to follow. When someone commended him on the equanimity he had shown in the face of miscellaneous adversities during his round, Lawrie simply smiled beatifically. "Well, I'm just a cool dude," he said. Frosty might have been a better description for much of his career. In the past, Lawrie has admitted that a forbidding exterior and occasional flashes of shirtiness have done little to help his case as far as harvesting the respect that he, as a former Open champion, has felt he deserved. But while the sun struggled to break through the overcast skies at Lytham, the 43 year-old was beaming like a buttercup, spreading bonhomie everywhere he went. Well, nearly everywhere. One of the many who appeared to show Lawrie little respect after his 1999 Open victory at Carnoustie was Davis Love III. In the aftermath of that controversial event, when the course set-up was heavily criticised, Love was widely reported as saying that the tournament had "got the champion it deserved." Love has since claimed he was misquoted, but it still added an interesting sub-plot when they were paired together at Lytham. And for most of their time on the course it appeared that relations between the two were still in the deep freeze. They exchanged a few words here and there, and commended each other's better shots, but when Lawrie subsequently suggested they had "chatted all day" he was surely taking his experiments with humorous irony too far. He was playing it a lot straighter on the course, though. When Lawrie failed to birdie the 13th it seemed that his last chance of improving his position had just gone. Yet going into the toughest closing stretch on the Open rota, he birdied the next two holes. An exquisite approach to the last brought another birdie at the last. To be three-under over those five finishing holes was almost as remarkable as what he had done at the start of his round. In benign conditions it also established Lawrie as a player who doesn't need force-nine wind to get himself near the top of a leaderboard. Perhaps the image of him as a foul-weather specialist fitted too well with his reputation for glumness in other regards, but the wider abilities of a player who has won twice in the Middle East deserve recognition. Not that he would mind a Lancs hooly to blow. "I can play when it's flat calm and I can play when it's nasty," he said. You've just got to adapt your game. To whatever nature brings, he might have added. And whenever nature calls.