Westwood and little known Chilean lead the Scottish Open

Lee Westwood and Chile's Mark Tullo have the lead as round 1 nears completion at the Barclays Scottish Open. Both are at -7 65 at the new Castle Stuart Golf Links near Inverness.

Westwood had an eagle, six birdies and just one bogey while Tullo birdied his first four holes, dropped three shots in the next four but recovered with five birdies in an inward 31. He has had 2 wins on the Challenge Tour, but has missed more cuts on this tour than he has made.  “I hit some great shots, I hit some terrible shots, and this golf course, the beginning of the week I said you can have a million birdies or a million bogeys and today, thank goodness it was a million birdies"

I listened to what Westwood and Donald said afterward, of course Luke is world #1 and Westwood will return there if he wins, and they feel that while the course has a stunning setting, with the fairways as wide as they are, it will really need a strong wind to stop these guys from taking it apart. To that point Phil Mickelson shot +1 73, which is not usually that bad for a National championship on a links course, but he is already 8 behind T104 !!

There was also some heavy rain during the Wednesday pro am which has softened the greens for this round at least..

Monty needs a top 5 finish to get into next week's Open Championship and he is in the big group at -5 67..

Here is the top 10 leaderboard, click on European Tour for a full scoreboard..

T1 WESTWOOD, Lee* -7 18 -7 65 - - - 65
T1 TULLO, Mark -7 18 -7 65 - - - 65
T3 HANSON, Peter* -6 18 -6 66 - - - 66
T3 COETZEE, George -6 18 -6 66 - - - 66
T3 OLESEN, Thorbjørn -6 17 -6 - - - - -
T6 WOOD, Chris -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 LANE, Barry -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 MOLINARI, Edoardo* -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 GOOSEN, Retief* -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 DONALDSON, Jamie -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 DONALD, Luke* -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 MONTGOMERIE, Colin* -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 FINCH, Richard* -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 DEL MORAL, Carlos -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 MCEVOY, Richard -5 18 -5 67 - - - 67
T6 WARREN, Marc -5 18 -5 67 - -

Bryan Angus also on twitter@mummmbles