AKRON (Ohio), Aug 19: There were no post-major letdowns from Tiger Woods or Vijay Singh on Thursday when the world’s top two players carded matching four-under 66s at the WGC NEC Invitational.

The pair share the first round lead with unheralded Swede Henrik Stenson on the Firestone Country Club’s classic South Course.

Building on the momentum from a strong fourth place finish at the U.S. PGA Championship, Woods launched his bid for a fourth title here with a flawless opening round.

Singh returned an almost equally tidy scorecard that included a single bogey but Stenson, playing in just his second event in the United States, had a more adventurous afternoon mixing seven birdies with three bogeys to get to his 66.

Only nine players in the elite 72-player field managed to scrape in under par on a sun-bathed opening day.

Lurking one stroke back at three-under 67 are Briton Nick Dougherty and Americans Davis Love III and Chris DiMarco, who lost in a playoff to Woods at the Masters earlier this season.

Spain’s Sergio Garcia and Australian Stuart Appleby and Nick O’Hern sit two shots adrift at two-under 68 while PGA champion Phil Mickelson, Chris Riley and Britain’s Luke Donald all finished on one-under 69.

First round scores

66 - Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Henrik Stenson

67 - Chris DiMarco, Davis Love, Nick Dougherty

68 - Stuart Appleby, Sergio Garcia, Nick O’Hern

69 - Phil Mickelson, Chris Riley, Luke Donald

70 - Mark Hensby, Zach Johnson, Colin Montgomerie, Kenny Perry, David Howell, Adam Scott, Thomas Bjorn, Kazuhiko Hosokawa, Sean O’Hair, Brent Geiberger

71 - Marc Cayeux, John Daly, Rod Pampling, KJ Choi, Fred Couples, Kenneth Ferrie, David Toms, Mike Weir, Paul McGinley Tim Clark

72 - Niclas Fasth, Ted Purdy, Jose Maria Olazabal, Stewart Cink, Chad Campbll, Steve Elkington, Ryan Palmer, Thomas Levet, Michael Campbell, Jim Furyk, Justin Leonard

73 - Woody Autin, Ian Poulter, Thongchai Jaidee, Scott Verplank, Rory Sabbatini, Tom Lehman, Trevor Immelman, Lee Westwood

74 - Stephen Ames, Stephen Gallacher, Stephen Dodd, Peter Lonard, Fred Funk, Geoff Ogilvy, Bart Bryant, Ben Crane

75 - Shigeki Maruyama, Paul Casey, Angel Cabrera

76 - Miguel Angel Jimenez, Darren Clarke, Richard Green, Jay Haas, Padraig Harrington

77 - Retief Goosen

79 - Craig Parry, Jyoti Randhawa

80 - Tim Petrovic

WD - Graeme McDowell.—Agencies