Tommy Fleetwood carded a course record-equalling 62 to take a one-shot lead after the first round of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
In a high scoring opening round, Rory McIlroy finished on -5 for the day, with Tom McKibbin just one shot behind.
Fleetwood, who won this event in 2017 and 2018 at a different venue, was four under par for his first three holes and followed a birdie at the seventh with five more on the back nine:
“When you shoot a 62, obviously everything is going to have gone very, very well. Just happy to have got off to a great start.
“I always feel like I’m a good putter. It doesn’t always show. But definitely sort of the second half of this year, I haven’t putted as well or converted as many putts as we’d have liked.
“We’ve been working on that and I happened to bump into Ken (Browne) and ‘Howler’ (David Howell) on the course and we were talking about a couple of things.
“They are two of the best putters I’ve ever met and any time you’re talking to those guys, you’re always going to pick something up.”
McIlroy leads Thriston Lawrence by 1,572.39 points on the Race to Dubai, with Rasmus Hojgaard a further 347.89 points adrift, meaning a win or runners-up finish would seal a sixth money list title ahead of next week’s season-ending event in Dubai.
The leading trio have been placed in the same group for the first two rounds and while Lawrence matched McIlroy’s score, Hojgaard went one better with a 66.
“Honestly it’s nice to be paired with Thriston and Rasmus because you can sort of keep an eye on what they are doing,” McIlroy said.
“It’s been a really good year, very, very consistent. Started well with the win in Dubai and I’ve let a couple slip away as well. But I’ve had a great deal of consistency, and that’s the reason that I find myself in the place that I am.
“And I wanted to come here to the Middle East these two weeks and finish the season off the way I felt it deserves to be finished off.”