On a day with a rich Carolina blue sky and galleries dotted with caps saluting the Tar Heels, Davis Love tried to put on a show.

The state of North Carolina’s most treasured adopted golfing hero tossed a club and sighed out loud and died an audible death or two over the wayward bounces and rolls of his golf ball around the No. 2 course at Pinehurst.

Here is a course and place where he wants to play well — in the worst of ways.

And here are thousands upon thousands of golf fans and Tar Heel fans who want it as much.

"Go Davis!!!!" cries punctuated the air around the thick galleries.

"Go Heels!!!!" choruses greeted the young man educated in Chapel Hill for three years in the early 1980s before he turned pro in 1985.

But in the end Friday, there was nothing for Love or his legions of fans to be happy about as his hopes for a first U.S. Open title took a smack with a three-over-par 73.

I regret I can’t offer you Love’s opinions on his round, as he refused requests for any interviews afterward in favor of a direct bolt to the practice range. There he and longtime teacher Jack Lumpkin engaged in a couple of hours of damage control — attention to timing and turning and all the little nuances that go into shooting 68s over 73s.

You can’t really blame him. He’d probably have said something a little stronger than his thoughts following Thursday’s opening-round 70: "Even though I shot even par, I could have done better," he said. "I’m not out of it. If I keep shooting even par, I’ll be in it over the last nine holes. I’m not disappointed, but I’m not real pleased."

Playing golf was quite an ordeal Friday for Love and his playing companions, Justin Leonard and Greg Norman. Norman played horrendously, shot an eight-over 78 and is long gone. Leonard shot a 75.

The golf course they found was significantly more difficult because the greens had firmed up over Thursday and the wind picked up. Amazingly, Norman hit only two greens all day and between them they hit only one third of all greens.

As Tiger Woods said from the group behind them, "The wind’s up and it’s blowing in the trees. Some of the pin locations, in my mind, are questionable."

Thing is, it’s not like Love’s ship is sinking amidst the pine straw and turtleback greens of Donald Ross’s most famous golf course. Three over is not out of it.

"Two or three over could still very well be in it come the weekend," said Ed Ibarguen, a long-time friend of Love’s and an assistant pro at UNC’s Finley Golf Course in the 1980s.

Love came to Pinehurst with plenty of good karma for the place, given his background here.

Back before golf schools were a dime a dozen, Golf Digest magazine was pioneering the idea of holding them at various resort locations around the country. Regularly in the 1970s they held golf schools at Pinehurst, with Davis Love Jr. and Lumpkin being among the all-star instructors on the staff.

Young Davis and brother Mark Love frequently came with their dad, and twilight was their favorite time of day because the members and resort guests were having cocktails and the No. 2 course was wide open.

"We’d play 16, 17 and 18 as many times as we could before someone ran us off," Love remembers.

Love would later win the ACC Championship on No. 2 in 1984, and two weeks later he collected the prestigious North and South Amateur title.

"Davis was playing a totally different golf course than the rest of us that year," remembers then-Tar Heel teammate and current Carolina golf coach John Inman. "He’s hitting the par-five fourth hole with a seven-iron and reaching the 10th with a driver and one-iron."

Love spent many hours with Lumpkin in those formative years of the 1970s on various holes of Pinehurst’s five courses that emanate from the main clubhouse. Lumpkin taught him to hit fades over near the harness tracks and took him to the 14th green of No. 2 to practice little chip shots and wedge shots.

"I didn’t have a very good short game at the time," Love says. "He taught me a little flip wedge shot to get the ball close to the hole on those crowned greens. I was like a kid with a brand new toy."

On Friday, Love went at a back-right hole location on that very hole and ended up in light rough 45 feet away, the green sitting at eye level when he addressed his recovery shot. On this one he used a three-wood, gripped and stroked like a putter, and watched the ball run up the hill and settle about 12 feet from the cup. He made the putt to a hearty roar from the crowd, about the only thing Love did all day to excite himself or his fans.

Maybe by Saturday morning, he and Lumpkin can find some more of that old Pinehurst magic.

Lee Pace is a Chapel Hill golf writer and the author of "Pinehurst Stories — a Celebration of Great Golf and Good Times."