(MENAFN- The Peninsula) By Armstrong Vas / The Peninsula
Doha: Eddie Pepperell fired a seven-under 65 to be part of a three-way tie for the lead after the opening round of the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters.
At the Doha Golf Club yesterday, Pepperell mixed eight birdies with a sole bogey on a day of low scoring at Doha GC, to join Gregory Havret and Aaron Rai at the top of the leaderboard.
Edoardo Molinari birdied seven of his final 10 holes to sit in the group on six under, with last year's winner Jeunghun Wang kicking off his title defence with an opening-round 68.
The leading trio are one shot clear of Italian Edoardo Molinari, Spaniard Alvaro Quiros, German Marcel Schneider and England's Oliver Fisher.
Pepperell missed his first two cuts of the season but made the weekend in Malaysia and Oman and with a little help from a new coach was glad to be making further progress.
'I've made some changes this week with personnel so I've been working on a couple of new things and I surprised myself out there with how well I managed to trust it, he said. 'It's been pretty nice on the range, although yesterday it was a bit of a grind, a bit of a struggle in the afternoon so I was in my room doing some drills last night.
'I'm looking forward to the weekend but even more so moving forward to the rest of the season. I want to push forward and I just feel like my game has been hitting ceilings a bit. I want to break through that.
Molinari, a three-time champion on the tour including last year in Morocco started with eight straight pars, and then made seven birdies in his last 10 holes, including a chip-in for birdie on the last.
'I hit every green apart from the last one. I hit a lot of fairways, I had a lot of chances for birdie, said Edoardo, the older brother of US PGA Tour star Francesco.
'Last week in Oman, I had a decent week, I had a bad first round and then three very good rounds. It's been the case for the last few weeks so my focus this week was to try and get a good start. Meanwhile, two-time winner Paul Lawrie is off and running again at his happiest hunting ground.
'Nice to get off to a decent start, wrote Lawrie on Twitter, the champion in both 1999 and 2012, who opened with a four-under 68.
Meanwhile promising Indian Shubhankar Sharma overcame a double bogey to post a three-under 69 in the opening round.
The 21-year-old, who is on top of both the European and Asian Tour Order of Merit lists by virtue of two wins in less than two months, had five birdies against one double bogey and was lying tied-38th.
Meanwhile, things did not pan out too well for SSP Chawrasia, who defends his Hero Indian Open title in just over two weeks from now. Chawrasia shot one-over 73 and was lying way down at tied-105th spot and in danger of missing the cut.
Other notable scores with local relevance came from the MENA Golf Tour player Josh White (England), who gained entry to the tournament by winning the Qatar Open, as he shot an impressive 5 under par 67, Ahmed Baig (Pakistan), winner of the Amateur Division at the Qatar Open, shot 74, Shergo Al Kaabi (Jordan) shot 73, Ahmed Marjan (Morocco) shot 74 while Qatari amateurs Ali Saleh Al Kaabi and Ali Al Shahrani shot 76 and 78 respectively.
The second round tees off this morning (Friday) with the first tee time of 6.30 am with the last starters teeing off at 12.30 pm with play expected to finish at around 5 pm.
Entrance to the 2018 Commercial Bank Qatar Masters is free with families encouraged to attend with plenty of Kids Zone activities in the Tournament Village.
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