Bland, Pepperell and Waring share early Qatar lead

Eddie Pepperell (Getty Images)

English trio Richard Bland, Eddie Pepperell and Paul Waring sat at the top of a congested leaderboard as day one of the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters got under way.
The three playing partners turned in 32 having played the back nine at Doha Golf Club to get to four under and lead the way by two shots from a group of 20 players.
Waring had been in contention heading into the weekend at last week's NBO Oman Open before a third round of 81 destroyed his chances but he brought his form of days one and two to Qatar, picking up birdies on the tenth, 14th, 16th and 17th.
Pepperell made a relatively slow start to the season, missing his first two cuts, but he played the weekend in Malaysia and Oman and made birdies on the tenth, 11th, 14th, 16th and 18th, with a single blemish on the 13th to join the lead.
Bland had missed the cut in all three of the previous Desert Swing events in 2018 but a hat-trick of gains from the 16th helped him up the leaderboard, as more birdies on the 12th and 13th sandwiched a bogey on the 15th.
Defending champion Jeunghun Wang, two-time winner here Paul Lawrie and two-time winner this season Shubhankar Sharma were in the group at two under.

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