Caltex Masters: Lawrie well placed after first round
Ireland’s Peter Lawrie, European Tour rookie of the year in 2003, was among an eight-strong group in third place on four under after today's play at the Caltex Masters in Singapore.
Lawrie is one shot behind leaders Peter Fowler and Thomas Levet, alongside South African James Kingston who was seven under with two to play but found water on his penultimate hole and ran up a triple-bogey six.
Lawrie would have shared the clubhouse lead but lipped out from five feet for birdie on the last, but was satisfied with his score after struggling with jet-lag.
“The putt horse-shoed on the last but I would take four 68s this week,” said the 29-year-old Dubliner, the first Irish golfer to win the rookie of the year award.
“I didn’t sleep too well last night and I feel tired. I was in bed early but I could have run a marathon at 1am I was so wide awake. I was watching the clock all night until getting up at 5.30am.
“I’ve played a lot of golf lately (this is his eighth event of the year) but I have a week off after this before playing in Portugal and two more weeks off after that. “I need to recharge the batteries for the big events coming up.”
Lian-Wei Zhang, whose win last year made him the first Chinese winner on the European Tour, could only manage an opening 72, but was celebrating another first after receiving a special invitation to the US Masters.
“I’m very happy to hear about my invitation to the Masters,” said Zhang, who will be the first Chinese player to play at Augusta.
“After playing professional golf for 10 years I never thought I would get the opportunity to play on the US Tour, let alone the Masters. It’s a dream come true.”
Meanwhile, Colin Montgomerie’s hopes of qualifying for next week’s Players Championship suffered an early blow.
Montgomerie began the €725,000 event ranked 51st in the world and needing to move into the top 50 to book his place at a tournament often labelled the fifth major.
However, that was likely to require his best performance of a season in which he has yet to find top form, joint 12th in his last outing in Dubai the best result from four strokeplay events.
And the 40-year-old could only manage a one-under-par 71 on a typically hot and humid day at Laguna National to trail the early leaders by four shots.
Starting on the 10th, Montgomerie was consistency personified in the early stages, carding eight pars and a solitary birdie to reach the turn in 35.
Another birdie followed at the 10th and at two under par with two holes to play, the former European number one was on course for a satisfactory opening effort.
But the Scot then left a 10ft birdie putt on his 17th inches short of the hole before pulling his tee shot on the last into the rough.
With the ball well below his feet Montgomerie could only hit his approach into a greenside bunker shot and failed to get up and down to record his only bogey of the day.
“I’m just disappointed to bogey the last,” said Montgomerie, whose last two victories have come in Asia – the TCL Classic and Macau Open in China in 2002 and 2003 respectively.
“It was a simple bunker shot and a poor bunker shot.
“I made one mistake all day, I do that too often these days and don’t make enough birdies.”
At one under, Montgomerie was four adrift of Australia’s Peter Fowler and France’s Thomas Levet, who had set the early clubhouse target at five under after rounds of 67.
