PGAs of Europe international team championship

CRAIG LEE (66) CLICKETY-CLICKS FOR
LEADERS SCOTLAND IN SPAIN

From Colin Farquharson, Our Man in Murcia

It was Scotland’s day in the first round of the PGAs of Europe international team golf championship, supported by Glenmuir, at the Dave-Thomas designed Roda course in the Murcia region of sunny Spain today.
Craig Lee from Stirling clickety-clicked with a six-under-par 66 – the lowest round in a field of 75 professionals.
Samuel Cairns of Westerwood backed him up with a 68 to put Scotland at the head of 25 countries with a first-round team total (best two from three individual scores to count daily) of 10 under par 134.
THREE SUB-70 SCORES FOR SCOTS
And Scotland were the only team to have all three players shoot under 70. Poor old Jim McKinnon from Irvine had a non-counting, three-under-par 69 – a score that would have counted for every other team in the competition with the exception of Wales.
And it is Wales who are Scotland’s closest rivals at eight-under-par 136 with a pair of 68s from Alun Evans (Newport Links) and Simon Edwards (Clays, Wrexham). Mark Litton (The Bedford) had Wales’ non-counting 73.
To complete an excellent start to the 72-hole competition for the PGAs of Great Britain & Ireland, England and Ireland are sharing third place on 139.
Leeds-born Duncan Muscroft, who has a golf teaching post near Venice, was watched by his dad Hedley as he shot England’s best score of 69. Glenmuir British club champion Paul Wesselingh (Kedleston Park, Derby) had a 70. England’s non-counter was Paul Simpson with a par 72 – which was a very good round indeed when one considers that he was sick all night with a touch of suspected food poisoning and wasn’t feeling all that great on the golf course.
Robert Giles (Greenore) paced Ireland with a 67. John Dwyer (Ashbourne) had a 72 and Leslie Walker (Dundalk) a non-counting 72.
It wasn’t an ooh-la-la day for France. The defending champion start the second day in joint 15th place after a disappointing team total of three-over-par 147.

Collated scoreboard

FIRST ROUND TEAM TOTALS

Par 72 x 2 = 144. Best two scores from three to count each round.
134 SCOTLAND (C Lee 66, S Cairns 68, J McKinnon 69).
136 WALES (A Evans 68, S Edwards 68, M Litton 73).
139 ENGLAND (D Muscroft 69, P Wesselingh 70, P Simpson 72), IRELAND (R Giles 67, J Dwyer 72, L Walker 79).
141 SWEDEN (J Stenberg 70, S Sterner 71, R Thornqvist 72).
142 NORWAY (N Diethelm 70, J Elgborn 72, J Uppard 75), CZECH REPUBLIC ( J Nemecek 679, P Strougal 73, J Juhaniak 74), GERMANY (S Brown 69, L Spencer 73, M Stevenson 76).
143 ITALY (M Bianco 70, J Baglioni 73, S Betti 75), SOUTH AFRICA (I Palmer 71, M Truter 72, I Ficalbi 73), AUSTRIA (M Krainz 71, A Wrnig 72, S Beretzki 72), FINLAND r Soravuo 70, S Aho 73, M Martikainen 78).
145 POLAND (M Proctor 71, D Ekberg 74, M Bednarczyk 80).
146 SWITZERLAND (R Swords 71,J-J Dusson 75, V J Ross 77).
147 FRANCE (D Montesi 71, J C Clugnac 76, Y Yver 77), UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (S Payne 71, J Shippey 76, A Mackenzie 76.
148 SLOVENIA (D Kraljic 70, U Gregoric 78, A Osmancevic 79).
149 BELGIUM (F Dhondt 73, M Willems 76, G D’Hollander 77), SPAIN (M Alonso 74, D Romero 75, R do Miguel 77)..
150 LUXEMBOURG (J Pailler 73, L Cain 77, J Pickford 82), PORTUGAL (D Moura 75, A Sequeira 75, N Cavalheiro 77), BULGARIA (N Turley 71, P Simard 79, S Nikolay 81), HOLLAND (B Valk 75, A Hastie 75, G Loning)..
152 CROATIA (M Raic 74, N Smoljenovic 78, D Ljubanopvic 78).
153 RUSSIA (A Nesterov 75, L Akremenko 78, S Sstaskov 80).