Joy and despair for Clarke at The Open

Darren Clarke has had a rollercoaster morning at the 142nd Open Championship at Muirfield today.

He put together a run of three successive birdies from the third to take him into red figures at two under.

However, he threw away all that momentum with a disastrous quadruple-bogey eight at the 461-yard sixth after taking three to get out of a greenside bunker having found rough off the tee and hacking out on to the fairway.

Overnight watering of the rapidly-drying greens, aided by some dawn mist which was quickly burned off by bright sunshine again, provided some assistance to the early starters.

Lee Westwood seized the opportunity and after declaring after yesterday's one-over 71 he was most happy with his putting he proved it was not all talk with two opening birdies, holing from 10 feet at the second.

It would have been even better had he not rolled his birdie attempt at the third past the hole from 12ft.

He dumped his tee shot at the 226-yard fourth into a bunker but splashed out to five feet to save par.

Henrik Stenson birdied the first, which was the hardest hole on the course yesterday but was playing downwind today, to move to two under.

World number one Tiger Woods, two under overnight, opened with a par having holed an eight-foot putt after coming up 10 yards short of the green.

Royal & Ancient officials do no expect the greens to produce the "dramatic increase" in speed they displayed yesterday which had a number of players voicing criticism.

England's Ian Poulter was the most critical, writing on Twitter: "8th hole is a joke, 18th needs a windmill & clown face."

Greenkeepers last night hand-watered the greens just enough to keep the grass alive as they do not want to significantly alter conditions.

"After the intense heat we hand-watered to help the grass, that gives you a more controlled watering than putting the sprinkler on," said Grant Moir, R&A director - rules of golf.

"It is not going to be quite so hot so we don't expect the dramatic increase from yesterday.

"Watering the greens has not altered the firmness, they are as firm today as they were yesterday."

R&A chief executive Peter Dawson said he did not expect conditions to worsen on the second day.

"We have had a lot of mist and dew overnight," Dawson told Press Association Sport.

"As the day went on yesterday the greens speeded up more than we expected because the temperature was higher than forecast.

"This morning is much damper. The greens are stimping (the measurement of the pace) just under what they were yesterday but don't expect them to get as quick."

The sixth also caused problems for Stenson, who had double-bogey there to drop him back to even par but he holed from 15ft for birdie at the next.

With the wind having changed direction, the 559-yard fifth - where yesterday South African Justin Harding recorded a drive of 378 yards - was playing much tougher.

Westwood hit driver-driver to reach the green only to see his ball curl away and roll off into a bunker, but splashed out to within 12 feet and birdied to go two under and three behind leader Zach Johnson, who does not tee off until 3.07pm.

Woods picked up his first birdie of the day at the 377-yard third, curling in a 12-footer to move to three under.