MELBOURNE, Australia (AP): England took four wickets in the opening session of the fourth Ashes test to get on top of Australia before a big crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday.

At lunch, Australia was 58-4 in a test it must at least draw to prevent England completing a successful Ashes defense. Chris Tremlett had two wickets, with one each to James Anderson and inclusion Tim Bresnan.

Michael Clarke was 12 not out at the interval, with Steven Smith yet to score. England captain Andrew Strauss won the toss and made the correct decision to send Australia in on a grey morning in Melbourne, with the MCG pitch notoriously difficult to bat upon on the first morning of a test.

Both teams started nervously on a green wicket as the crowd filed in amid expectations of the biggest recorded crowd in test history of 91,000.

Australia opener Shane Watson was dropped twice by England in the first 13 balls. Watson did soon depart as Tremlett's lifter spooned off a glove to Kevin Pietersen at gully.

Phil Hughes went out for the third time in the series to a full ball, lashing a loose drive of a Bresnan delivery straight to Pietersen. Bresnan was brought into the side to replace Steven Finn.

Australia captain Ricky Ponting, playing with a broken left little finger suffered in the second test, made 10 off 38 balls.

He played two brilliant pull shots that stood out, but was undone by a superb Tremlett leg-cutter that squared up the skipper and an edge flew to the slips where it was well taken by Graeme Swann.

That reduced the hosts to 37-3 and brought to the crease Mike Hussey, who had batted Australia out of trouble in both the opening two tests.

However he could not do so this time. Anderson came on for a second spell and had Hussey caught behind by wicketkeeper Matt Prior for 8.

Only one more ball was bowled before a sudden rain shower arrived and prompted lunch to be called a few minutes early.

Australia named an unchanged side for this test, sticking with four paceman and releasing spinner Michael Beer for Sheffield Shield duty.

The decision would have looked better had Australia won the toss and got first bowl on a two-paced green wicket, but instead it must bowl last without a spinner to exploit a dry pitch.

Finn was rested despite being the leading wicket-taker in the series with 14 wickets. He was expensive in Perth, while Bresnan is a better batsman and should strenghten an England batting line up which looked rather shallow at the WACA.

The record crowd was not reached by lunch, with many Melbourne Cricket Club members normally late to arrive on Boxing Day. Official attendance would be announced later Sunday.

BRISBANE, Australia (AP): The Australian Open will precede the Presidents Cup in Melbourne next year, a decision that will almost certainly see Tiger Woods missing from the Australian Masters in 2011.

The PGA of Australia announced Sunday that the Open, to be held at a Sydney-area course, will be held from Nov. 10-13. The Australian PGA at Coolum, Queensland will be held from Nov. 24-27, a week after the Presidents Cup between the United States and International team members is held at Royal Melbourne from Nov. 17-20.

The PGA also said that the Australian Masters was tentatively scheduled for Dec. 1-4, but that date was still to be confirmed. Woods has played the Masters the last two years, winning it in 2009, and had said he'd prefer to see it played the week before the Presidents Cup.

The Masters is scheduled to be played at Kingston Heath, another sandbelt course near Royal Melbourne and one which would have given Woods and other Presidents Cup players an ideal preparation for the team event.

IMG, which manages Woods, also runs the Australian Masters and had hoped to get the prime week-before date to get players from the Presidents Cup in its field.

The Australian Open in Sydney will now have that opportunity, although the likely course, The Lakes, does not have as much in common with Royal Melbourne as Kingston Heath does.

"We would like this date. It's critical to us," Mark Steinberg, head of IMG's global golf division, said in November during the Masters. "We feel like we took on the risk by moving to this date a few years ago, going up against some big events, and we made it successful. We feel we deserve to keep the date, now that it's a coveted date for next year."

Woods received a $3 million appearance fee - half of that paid by the Victorian state government - but in his first year, a government study showed the economic return was more than $30 million.

Max Garske, the chief executive of the PGA of Australia, said Sunday that the decision "was made in the best interest of both Australian golf and the PGA Tour of Australasia."

"There were a number of factors that needed to be carefully considered in finalizing the scheduling for 2011, including the timing of a number of international events, the availability of certain venues and the domestic schedule that best serves the Australian golfing public," Garske said.

"With the focus of the golfing world set to be firmly on Melbourne come mid-November 2011, it is a given that the Presidents Cup will offer up a number of benefits to events falling on either side. So with these factors in mind we feel we have made the decision in the best interest of the game."