John Patterson spent the day alternating between disaster and command. At the par-4 4th, one of the harder holes on the PGA Catalunya Tour course, he took a 12. That is eight over par at a single hole. It was comfortably his worst of the day, and the sentence requires no further assistance. He then parred the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th, four holes without a gross shot lost. The stretch from the 7th brought him 19 points and the outright Trophy lead at the 11th. A double bogey at the 12th ended the sequence. A bogey at the 15th was somehow enough to put him back in front. He closed the day a single point off the lead, his 96 gross a personal best at the course.

Elsewhere the 2019 Green Jacket honours were shared. Jon Baker birdied the 14th to draw level at the top of the gross standings. Gregg Williams matched him with that closing par at the 18th. In the Wooden Spoon race, Alex Baker had gone last at the par-3 2nd, the easiest hole on the course, with a quadruple bogey. The day was not yet half done.

Alex Baker's opening round came apart before it had begun. He lost ten shots to par in three holes: a triple bogey at the 1st, a quadruple bogey at the short 2nd, a triple at the 3rd. Not one net par among them. The demolition proceeded in strict numerical order, which at least showed method. The 13th, the hardest hole on the course, produced a quadruple-bogey 8, part of a run through 13 to 15 that cost him nine shots. A quintuple-bogey 10 at the 10th was folded into the total without ceremony. His double bogey at the 14th dropped him to the bottom of the TEG 12 Wooden Spoon race. There was a late reprieve. Pars at the 16th and the 18th, either side of a bogey at the 17th, brought him nine points from his last three holes. It lifted him nowhere. He remained bottom of the Spoon table, and his gross was ten shots worse than his best at the course a TEG earlier.

Stuart Neumann set a course record on the opening day. It was not the sort anyone frames. His 105 is the highest gross score ever recorded at PGA Catalunya - Tour, beating the previous worst of 103, a figure that had survived ten prior visits. Twenty-two of those shots arrived at two holes. The 13th, the hardest on the course, yielded a sextuple-bogey 10. The par-five 15th followed with a septuple-bogey 12.

The damage was not confined to those two holes. The round was not without merit, either. Neumann gathered nine Stableford points across holes 10 to 12. A level par at the 2nd drew him level for the lead in the 2019 Trophy. He also put together pars at the 16th and the 17th without dropping a shot, calmly, like a man tidying a room he had already burned down.

It capped an unhappy return for Neumann, whose previous best gross here was 98. He finished seven shots worse than that.