TULSA, Okla. — Graeme Storm has played his share of tournaments in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. He spent a winter cleaning trays at a cake factory to scrape up money for Christmas gifts.

So when the Tulsa sun started baking down Thursday afternoon and the pressure of the PGA Championship started ramping up, Storm didn’t let it bother him.

Heat is all relative to a guy like him.

Storm shot a 5-under 65 to head into the second round with a two-stroke lead over an equally unlikely — but much better known — player ... by the name of John Daly.

“I have no idea,” Daly said when asked where this unexpected round came from.

Storm wasn’t pressing the issue either.

A journeyman on the European tour, Storm still needed a special invite from the PGA to make it to Southern Hills despite getting his first big-league win earlier this year. Having made it, he got through the kiln-like day without a bogey.

Quite a surprise given the 18-over par the Englishman shot last week in the Bridgestone Invitational.

“I thought, well, just enjoy the moment and play golf,” Storm said. “Enjoy it. That’s what we’re here for.”

Storm had four bogeys, a double bogey and three birdies in his first 10 holes today, dropping to 2-under.

Temperatures rose past 100 for the first round. An unpredictable breeze did little to cool things off, but did wreak some havoc on Tiger Woods’ game. The world’s best player shot a 1-over 71, six strokes off the lead, and said he couldn’t judge the wind once it started swirling on his second nine.

“I felt like I hit the ball better than my score indicates,” said Woods, the Bridgestone winner. “Every time I missed, I missed ever so slightly in the wrong spot. That’s how it goes.”

Phil Mickelson, recovering from a wrist injury and seeking to make the cut for the first time in a major since the Masters, opened with a 73. He had three bogeys on the back nine.

“I was certainly disappointed with the way it finished up,” he said.

Mickelson dropped to 4-over early in his round today.

Nobody had it worse than U.S. Open champion Angel Cabrera, who hit two shots out of bounds on No. 6, then another into the water, and on and on, until his score and Bo Derek had something in common — both were “10s.”

“I had a bad hole, hit bad shots, made 10 and that was it,” the Argentine explained through his caddie, Eddie Gardino, after shooting an 81.

Nobody, however, knows the vagaries of golf better than Daly. He took the sport by storm at this tournament in 1991, winning as the ninth alternate without even the benefit of a practice round at Crooked Stick.

Now, he skips practice by choice. He spent the early part of the week at the Cherokee Casino playing slots. No use in using up all his energy too soon in this kind of weather.

“There were odds with all the caddies and players this week on who would fall first, me or my caddie,” Daly said. “But we made all 18 holes.”

Daly’s method for beating the heat is lighting up a cigarette and drinking diet cola.

“It actually works,” he said.

His course management style was, well, Dalyesque, but he got away with it.

He cranked a driver deep into the woods on No. 12 — an unwise club choice given the shape of the hole and how far he hits it — and seemed to be in big trouble. But after carefully measuring off his yardage, he hit a wedge that flew under one tree and over another and landed the ball 20 feet from the hole to save par.

On the short par-4 17th, he took out driver, then exchanged it for a safer 2-iron to make par. But on 18, he inexplicably hit driver and got lucky when the ball landed on a small slice of fairway that bisects a bunker and a stream. He made par there, too.

Think Daly will ever apologize for hitting driver? Think again.

“If I’m going to make a big score, I’d rather make a big score being aggressive than being conservative,” he said.

Storm, meanwhile, said he wasn’t going to let the hot weather get to him. As a veteran of the European tour, he finds himself baking in the Far East fairly regularly.

“I think the conditions we play in in Asia are a massive help to every European tour player that’s here this week,” Storm said.

He started with consecutive birdies, nearly making an ace on the 11th. And when it looked like he might get in trouble with a tee shot into the trees on the No. 2, he chipped in for birdie and raised his hands, wondering what was happening to him.

The whole day was a surprise.

“Obviously you dream about playing in tournaments like this, but at the time I couldn’t really see myself playing golf, to be honest,” he said of his thoughts while working at the cake factory in 2002 for $250 a week.

For one day, at least, the cake factory seemed a long way away. Daly’s myriad troubles on and off the course seemed just as far removed.

The tournament, of course, is a marathon, the weather isn’t forecast to get cooler and Woods — the most feared player in golf — is hardly out of it.

But with days like Thursday, almost anything seemed possible.

“If I didn’t think I could win anymore, I wouldn’t be playing,” Daly said. “I just feel like today was a good confidence booster for me.”