ESTORIL (Portugal), April 1: Austria’s Markus Brier was the first round leader of the Portugal Open at the Oitavos Golf Club on Thursday after firing a six-under par 65.
He was two shots ahead of four players who all shot 67 - England’s Neil Cheetham, Titch Moore of South Africa, Stephen Scahill of New Zealand and Denmark’s Mads Vibe-Hastrup.
Brier mastered the testing conditions which saw a number of players suffer high scores due to the vicious cross-course winds coming off the Atlantic.
One of the most high-profile to suffer was England’s Nick Dougherty who was the pre-tournament favourite having won his first Tour title in Singapore in January.
The 22-year-old was just one shot off the lead when he fell foul of the 18th where he drove out of bounds on the 474-yard par four and then hit his second ball into a bush to the left of the fairway.
After taking a penalty drop, he then missed the green and needed three more shots to get down from the edge of the green, running up a quadruple bogey eight.
From two under par Dougherty slumped to two over and after another bogey on the fifth, needed to birdie his last two holes to record a one over par 72.
Dougherty was one of the early starters who faced the toughest conditions, with only 11 out of 78 players breaking par.
First round scores
65 - Markus Brier
67 - Mads Vibe-Hastrup, Stephen Scahill, Titch Moore, Neil Cheetham
68 - Stephen Dodd, Jonathan Lomas, Paul Broadhurst, Barry Lane
69 - Paul Lawrie, Ben Mason, Fredrik Andersson Hed, Leif Westerberg (SWE), Jose-Filipe Lima, Gary Murphy, Cesar Monasterio, Alastair Forsyth, Stuart Little
70 - Jean-Francois Remesy, Jean Van de Velde, Henrik Nystrom, Peter Baker, Damien McGrane, Stephen Gallacher, Ian Garbutt, Niclas Fasth, Klas Eriksson, Raymond Russell
71 - David Gilford, Simon Hurd, John Bickerton, Kenneth Ferrie, Patrik Sjoland, Christian Cevaer, Richard Sterne, Steve Webster, Carlos Rodiles, Ignacio Garrido), Gonzalez Fernando-Castano, Simon Dyson, Rolf Muntz, Martin Erlandsson
72 - Simon Khan, Nick Dougherty, Gregory Havret, David Carter, Marcel Siem), Fredrik Henge, Santiago Luna, Simon Wakefield, Jean-Francois Lucquin , Richard Bland, Garry Houston, Peter Lawrie, Charl Schwartzel, Sam Little, Johan Axgren, Ivo Giner.
First Day WASHED OUT
TORONTO: The first round of the BellSouth Classic was washed away by heavy rains on Thursday as bad weather continued to plague the 2005 PGA Tour.
Without a single player able to tee off officials have rescheduled the opening round for Friday starting at 0700 local at the TPC at Sugarloaf in Duluth, Georgia and will now have to scramble to complete the $5 million tournament with the year’s first major, the U.S. Masters, set for next week in Augusta.—Agencies
