Lloyd Saltman equalled the best round of his professional career on the opening day of the Madeira Islands Open \u2013 Portugal \u2013 BPI as a scorching eight under par 64 moved him two shots clear at the top.<\/p>\n
The Scotsman, a former World Amateur Number One and two-time Walker Cup player, was the first man off on the first tee and the early bird certainly caught the worm at the stunning Clube de Golf do Santo da Serra.<\/p>\n
Despite swirling winds at the Madeira venue, which sits 700 metres above sea level, the 27 year old made the perfect start with a birdie at the first before three more in a row, from the third hole, and another at the ninth took him to the turn in five under.<\/p>\n
The Edinburgh man, who was a picture of calmness throughout his opening round at the Madeira venue, gained another shot at the 11th before mistakenly hitting the wrong wedge into the green at the 12th and subsequently falling to his first bogey of the day.<\/p>\n
He bounced straight back in superb fashion, however, as a birdie at the 13th cancelled out his only blemish of the day, before two more birdies on the way home earned him an early lead, which he maintained for the remainder of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m very pleased with my round,\u201d said Saltman, who carded a 64 in the second round of the 2012 Nordea Masters. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy out there today, with the wind swirling and getting very strong at certain points.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just played really well tee to green and made the putts I needed to make and my short game was really good as well so I can\u2019t really pick any faults from that round.<\/p>\n \u201cI have put myself in a great position and I’m here to win. I’ve been working very hard trying to get my game as good as I can and it\u2019s nice to see the work paying off.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a momentum killer at the 11th. It\u2019s a short hole and I was only going in with a wedge but for the first time in my life I actually took the wrong club out. I hit the shot and it was only when I gave the club back to my caddie I realised I hit a 58 degree instead of a 54.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never done that but I was so into the yardage and the shot, I didn\u2019t even look at the club and it went into the bunker. That was my only mistake so it was pretty close to a flawless round.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Richard Bland of England was two strokes back after he fired seven birdies for a six under par round of 66, while Sweden\u2019s Joakim Lagergren, Scotsman Craig Lee and Mark Tullo of Chile were a shot further back in tied third, after five under par rounds of 67.<\/p>\n Foto:\u00a9Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lloyd Saltman equalled the best round of his professional career on the opening day of the Madeira Islands Open \u2013 Portugal \u2013 BPI as a scorching eight under par 64 moved him two shots clear at the top. The Scotsman, a former World Amateur Number One and two-time Walker Cup player, was the first man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfcircus.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}