Well-traveled Chopra off to great start in season opener

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KAPALUA, Hawaii -- Daniel Chopra may be making his Mercedes-Benz Championship debut this week, but he's already played the host Plantation Course many times. On his PlayStation, that is.

Daniel Chopra did his course scouting via computer game this week. (Ferrey/WireImage)

Turns out, Chopra must have gotten a pretty good feel for the picturesque hillside layout by playing that video game, too. He fired a 4-under-par 69 in Thursday's first round to finish one stroke off the lead held by Nick Watney.

That practice round with the defending champion, Vijay Singh, certainly didn't hurt, either. Neither does having Mitch Knox, who caddied for David Duval when he won the PGA TOUR's season-opener in 1999, on the bag.

Chopra earned his invitation to the Mercedes-Benz Championship when he won the Ginn sur Mer Classic in October. But he used to watch the event, which gathers together the previous year's winners, on television each year.

"I'm a huge golf fan," Chopra said. "I'm just like every old hack that sits back at home and loves watching golf on TV, and I do, too. I pay attention. It's one of the tournaments that I love watching on TV, and I see guys, how they play the hole.

"Obviously, you don't get the full scope of the lines that they're taking but you still get a very good idea of what's going on. So I come out here and I'm fairly familiar with most of the holes and the shots."

Indeed. Chopra set the tone for the afternoon when he rolled in a pair of 30-footers for birdie on the second and third holes. He went on to make a total of five birdies and just one bogey, taking just 29 putts in the process.

Chopra wasn't bothered by the rapidly changing conditions that often featured light rain on some holes and sunshine on the next. He managed to keep his shots low into the trade winds that were considerably less blustery than the previous two days.

"I don't think I hit a single shot all day long except for maybe with a driver, that was a normal up in the air shot," Chopra said. "Every iron shot I hit I knocked down, took loft off of it, cut or drew it in there.

"I manufactured pretty much every single shot I had to hit today. ... And then when the rain started coming in, you really had to pay attention and make sure you focused because you get one up in the air and it starts moving with the wind it'll be a while before it lands somewhere in a canyon."

Chopra knows a thing or two about hitting into wide open spaces, too. He was the first person to hit a golf ball off the Great Wall in China at a photo shoot during the 1995 Volvo China Open.

"I teed up a ball in between the cracks, hit a 5 iron from the top and it sailed back over to the other side,' recalled Chopra, who has the framed photo on the wall of his Orlando home. "It was a fun thing."

The eclectic Chopra was born in Sweden but moved to India, where he lived with his paternal grandparents, when he was 7. He was only supposed to stay there for a couple of years, but he started playing golf and cricket and making friends, and suddenly India felt like home.

"I loved it over there," Chopra said. "The only real differences for me in my mind were they didn't have all my favorite sweets or my favorite drinks, but other than that I thought it was really great.

"I'm very proud to be half and half. People say, do you feel more Swedish or Indian? I see myself as Swedish when I'm in Sweden and Indian when I'm in India. The fact that I grew up in India ... my thinking might be a little bit more Indian, but ... I think the physical side of me might be a little more Swedish. (So) I feel right down the middle."

Chopra is fluent in three languages, and he likes the fact that people often don't think he understands what they are saying about him when he really does. He switches between languages with ease, too.

"It's funny, when I was playing the European Tour, and even out here when we'd play a practice round with Arjun Atwal or Jeev (Singh) and we'll have a Swedish guy in the same group, I'll speak Swedish to him and Indian to (the other) and English to my caddy," Chopra said, smiling.

"And I remember, we had an American guy playing with us and he was like, what the hell just happened?"

Chopra says Swedes are more methodical, intense and analytical while Indians are more laid back and fun-loving. "When we played the Asian Tour, the Indian table is always the loudest table," the well-traveled 34-year-old said.

He would love to make the European Ryder Cup team that will play at Valhalla in September, but since Chopra now plays the bulk of his golf on the PGA TOUR, his avenues are limited. He'd need to get one of the spots that go to the top five Europeans in the Official World Golf Ranking or be picked by Captain Nick Faldo.

"If I play well, of course, (I can make the team)," Chopra said. "But it's a tough one. If I win another and have a few more top finishes closer towards that date, I'll think about it more, but right now I'm just excited to get back on TOUR and be playing as a tournament winner for the first time."

That's the Swede -- and the fun-loving Indian -- in Chopra talking.