MELBOURNE, Dec 5: Australia’s Steve Collins rode his luck to hold a two-stroke lead in the Australian Masters on Thursday in wild, wet and windy conditions as Tom Watson and Nick Faldo failed to beat par.

Collins, a self-confessed under-achiever, shot six birdies and two bogeys in his round of four-under-par 68 at Melbourne’s Huntingdale Golf Club. The 30-year-old turned with an outward nine of 32 but bogeyed the par-three 15th and par-four 18th holes.

Leading first scores (Australia unless stated):

68 Steve Collins

70 Peter Lonard, Adam Scott

71 Wayne Riley, Martin Doyle, Jarrod Moseley, Gavin Coles, Adam Crawford, Tony Carolan, Steven Conran

72 Andrew Buckle, Robert Allenby, Scott Gardiner, Ben Burge, Mark Allen, Craig Parry, Greg Chalmers, Nick O’Hern, Marcus Fraser, Richard Ball

Asian Masters scores

KUALA LUMPUR: Leading scores after the first round of the $500,000 Asian Masters at the par-72 Kota Permai Golf Club on Thursday:

66 Craig Kamps

67 Digvijay Singh

68 David Dixon, Patrik Sjoland, Rafael Ponce, Ted Oh, Danny Chia, Anthony Kang, James Kingston, Kang Wook-soon, Arjun Atwa

69 Lee James, James Oh, Mo Joong-kyung, Chawalit Plaphol, Edward Loar, Jim Johnson, Clay Devers, Danny Zarate, Boonchu Ruangkit, Kevin Na, Prayad Marksaeng, Simon Yates, Jyoti Randhawa.—Reuters