Nordea Masters 2015: Leaderboard Scores and Highlights from Thursday
Local favourites Jens Dantorp and Marcus Kinhult lead the field after the first day of the 2015 Nordea Masters, with England's Chris Paisley joining the duo at the top of the leaderboard after Thursday's session.
The trio carded a round of five-under 67 to take a one-shot lead over a host of players during a sunny first day of competition in Malmo, Sweden. The front nine gave the players some trouble, and via the European Tour's Twitter account, the course-knowledge of the locals made the difference:
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
Here's a look at the leaderboard after the first round:
| T1 | Jens Dantorp | -5 | 67 |
| T1 | Marcus Kinhult | -5 | 67 |
| T1 | Chris Paisley | -5 | 67 |
| T4 | Thomas Pieters | -4 | 68 |
| T4 | Lee Slattery | -4 | 68 |
| T4 | Benjamin Hebert | -4 | 68 |
| T4 | Maximilian Kieffer | -4 | 68 |
| T4 | Sebastian Soderberg | -4 | 68 |
| T4 | Adrian Otaegui | -4 | 68* (after 16) |
| 10 | Hennie Otto | -3 | 69 |
For the full leaderboard, visit EuropeanTour.com.
Amateur Marcus Kinhult Highlights Opening Day
Kinhult was undoubtedly the biggest feel-good story of the day, as the amateur came out of nowhere to grab a share of the lead with a five-under 67. Like most, he struggled on the front nine with two bogeys, but five birdies on the back nine more than made up for it.
The Swede is just 18 years old, and Steve Elling of Golfblot.com thinks he must have enjoyed his spectacular round:
The youngster credited his great putting for the excellent score, and told the European Tour website how delighted he was to be playing in this event: "It’s pretty special to play in a European Tour event and to play here in Sweden. That score was thanks to brilliant putting. I played really well from tee to green but I also holed a lot of putts for birdie and for par. The putter was pretty hot."
Of course, putting wasn't his only strength on Thursday:
There was even more reason for celebration among the local fans, who saw Dantorp grab an early lead as the first man to card a five-under. He was one of the few to finish the front nine bogey-free, but ran into his first on the 10th hole. An eagle on the next put him back in the lead, and one more birdie gave him his final score.
Dantorp hit an incredible 16 of his 17 scrambles, and he'll have to find the fairway with more consistency in Round 2 if he wishes to keep his spot at the top of the leaderboard. Still, congratulations were in order, courtesy of Jesper Parnevik:
Paisley bogeyed the second hole but played a very solid round of golf, finding the fairway 10 of 14 times on his way to a share of the lead.
Further down the leaderboard, several top players had solid starts. Henrik Stenson carded a two-under 70 and showed his incredible ability to get out of tricky situations on several occasions. This was undoubtedly one of the best shots of the day:
Thomas Bjorn and Stephen Gallacher finished the day one-under par, but both were two-over at some point during their rounds. Both sit among the favourites to win this year's Nordea Masters and showed their ability by recovering from poor starts.
It's unlikely Dantorp and Kinhult will be able to keep up the incredible standard of play they showed on Thursday, and expect the big names on Tour to make a move up the board on Friday. Stenson in particular looks to be in great form, while Maximilian Kieffer has been firing on all cylinders for weeks.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
