By Ben Collins, Sportal Geoff Ogilvy was pleased to come through his opening round on even-par after Royal Sydney was hit by miserable weather on the first day of the MFS Australian Open. Ogilvy and company have had to contend with swirling winds and intermittent rain on the opening day of this year&aposs event, forcing Ogilvy to adopt a policy of damage limitation. But the US Open winner believes he did enough to make sure he is still in contention for his first Stonehaven Cup going into the second day. “The wind&aposs up and down,” he said. “It&aposs hard work, but I didn&apost do too much damage. The idea is to not be out of the tournament on a day like this. There will be a lot of guys out there who&aposll be out of it by the end of today.” “I don&apost think even-par will be out of it, so that was my goal. I don&apost think that&aposll be too far away, unless it gets decidedly better in the next few hours.” “You&aposve just got to chip away,” he added. “It&aposs the Australian Open, you&aposve only one chance at it every year, so you just try to make sure you don&apost get out of it on the first day.” Ogilvy set out from the 10th in a group with two-time winner Aaron Baddeley and American Bob Estes, and the 29-year-old Victorian was relieved to get off to a positive start. “I birdied my first hole, so that was a great way to start because you&aposre under (par) before you&aposre over – it&aposs pretty hard on a day like this if you&aposre over before you&aposre under, you just look so far away if you&aposre over par,” he said. “I hit a couple of shots that went 50 or 60 yards shorter than I normally hit them because it just hit a wall (of wind). Aaron did the same thing, Bob did the same thing.” “You&aposre always going to miss greens when it&aposs like that so you just try to miss it to the side so you&aposve got some chance to get it up and down, and not hit any round-killing shots, the big crazy ones out of bounds or into bad spots, which I managed to avoid.” Ogilvy played on the European Tour in 1999 and 2000, but admits he has rarely played in such miserable conditions since joining the US PGA Tour in 2001. “I&aposve got more layers on than I&aposve had for a while,” he joked. “We don&apost play in it this much in the States. Generally if it rains or there&aposs a storm, we get to sit in the clubhouse.” “But anyone who&aposs played in Europe has played in this. We&aposve had some days like this in Europe, worse sometimes, but you just do what you can.”