European Tour BMW PGA Championship leaderboard http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2018/tournamentid=2018044/leaderboard/index.html#/leaderboard
The flagship event of the European Tour, and the first in the lucrative Rolex Series is underway at it's home, the Wentworth Club in the county of Surrey, a very leafy affluent part of the country 25 miles NE of London.
Rory McIlroy is the headliner, he came from 7 shots behind to win here 4 years ago to start his best season yet, 2014, while Alex Noren is the defending champion and as always there is a stellar field, stars and favorites from Europe and around the world.
For me and many of my era, Wentworth became famous back in the mid 60's when the Piccadilly World Match Play was played here. IMG founder Mark McCormack had become Arnold Palmer's agent and capitalizing on Arnie's phenomenal popularity in the UK he wanted a format to feature his star.
Arnie was joined by Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino amongst American stars in an 18 man field including international stars like Gary Player and Peter Thompson to accompany British stars of the day like Peter Alyss, Neil Coles, and later Tony Jacklin.
They were ferried around in a fleet of Rolls Royces and the format was knockout Match play. Apart from the one sided Ryder Cup it was the only match play event and the chance for British players to beat one of the big boys made it must see TV in Europe.
Today of course it all has changed, golf is now global and the players are fabulously wealthy, but this was a big deal with legendary matches in it's day.
As round 1 gets underway under overcast skies, following rain overnight, a pair of South Africans Dean Burmester and Darren Fichardt have the clubhouse lead at -6 66 followed by veteran Englishman Richard Bland and young gun Matthew Fitzpatrick in at -5 67.
Bryan Angus
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