CONTRARY to popular opinion, it is not the quality of your best round that determines whether or not you win an Open championship. Instead, it is how you perform when things are not going to plan that dictates where you will finish on Sunday evening.

So while yesterday's level-par round of 71 might have contained few of the fireworks that thrilled Carnoustie on Thursday, it could yet prove to be the performance that wins Sergio Garcia his first major.

There was little in the way of brilliance and even less in the way of bravura. But on a day when precious little went in his favour, the Spaniard displayed a resilience and resolve that augurs well for the challenges ahead.

"A grinder's day" was how Garcia described a performance that was about as atypical of his preferred playing style as it is possible to get, but in a championship as demanding as the Open there are times when it is necessary to grind for glory.

We would all like our golfers to mimic Garcia's hero, Severiano Ballesteros, and throw caution to the wind at every turn, but for every flamboyant Spanish hero there are a hundred erratic failures cursing the limit of their temperament.

Garcia has tended to fall into that second camp himself, but as Carnoustie finally found its teeth yesterday, its Spanish conqueror resisted the temptation to bite back.

Precarious pin positions were afforded the utmost respect. Pars were cherished items rather than reasons to rue an opportunity lost. And a situation that could have seen Garcia implode and concede his advantage became a lesson in how to patiently construct a winning position.

By resisting temptation so totally, the previously temperamental 27-year-old proved that he has the mettle to withstand anything that might be thrown at him in the next two days, even if that includes a repeat of last year's final-day Open showdown with the arch-grinder himself, Tiger Woods.

Indeed, there was a moment at the end of Garcia's round yesterday that seemed to suggest that last year's two main protagonists have morphed into a re-arranged version of themselves.

Having played an immaculate chip shot from the fringe of the 18th green, Garcia found himself crouched over a three-foot par putt to leave himself two shots clear of the field.

His attention was distracted at the moment of address, though, thanks to a gargantuan gasp from the gallery at the side of the adjacent first tee.

While Garcia was about to confirm his new-found reliability, Woods was hammering an errant tee shot into the meandering Barry Burn. The confounding of stereotypes could hardly have been more total or more telling.

And yet it hadn't really looked that way when Garcia set about defending his lead five hours earlier. Watched by a throng of humanity that included six supporters dressed in T-shirts that spelled out his first name, S.E.R.G.I.O duly shanked a nine iron to the first that appeared to have spelled out disaster.

With his ball tangled in the kind of rough that had reduced him to tears on his first visit to Carnoustie eight years ago, Garcia was facing the prospect of throwing away Thursday's good work in an instant.

Yet in the time that it took him to float an improvised chip to within a foot of the hole, he had persuaded all of his onlookers that he wasn't about to be wasteful.

Had his opening efforts ended in a bogey, goodness knows what might have happened in the subsequent 17 holes. With a par safely secured, though, he duly gritted his teeth and made percentage golf pay.

Drive to the middle of the fairway, iron to the middle of the green. Simple in practice, simply impossible for the majority of the field.

"Go, go Sergio," implored one onlooker, after Garcia had atoned for a bogey at the fourth with a birdie at the par-five sixth, but the only thing going was the number of holes that were still to negotiate.

Whereas Thursday's rash of birdies had been greeted with delirium, yesterday's par procession invited bewilderment.

"I didn't expect this," grumbled a Garcia fan. "It's like bloody watching Faldo." Intended as a criticism, but given the Englishman's Open record, surely received as entirely the opposite.

Level par at the turn, Garcia disappeared for a toilet break after safely finding the fairway on the tenth, but while his bladder might have been weak, his resolve remained as strong as ever.

A bogey on 11 - courtesy of a rare wayward drive into a fairway bunker - saw the Spaniard's lead reduced to one, but rather than pushing for a non-existent opportunity, he simply bided his time before making amends on the second par five.

That was a precursor to four more pars, with the last of them, on the 18th, juxtaposing Woods' drive to disaster. "I didn't know he did that," said Garcia moments later, although the smile on his face suggested otherwise.

Woods could yet be back, of course, and the likes of KJ Choi, Jim Furyk and Retief Goosen remain poised to attack Garcia's lead.

On the evidence of yesterday's performance, though, the Spaniard will be a difficult leader to overhaul.

As ever, when it comes to the majors, Garcia's most dangerous opponent could yet turn out to be himself. But as long as he grinds rather than gambles, The Open Championship will remain his for the taking.