Alex Baker opened this year's TEG at Oitavos Dunes with a gross 113. It is the worst round anyone has posted at the course across three TEG visits. The previous worst, 111, had stood across twelve prior rounds. Baker removed it from the record books without apparent effort. It was also, comfortably, his own worst outing here: ten shots worse than his last visit, and thirty adrift of his own course-best 103.

There was no single collapse. There was a sequence of them, arriving at regular intervals like scheduled services. He opened with a quintuple-bogey 9 at the 1st. He added another quintuple at the 11th, and a quadruple at the 7th. Then he closed with a sextuple-bogey 10 at the 17th. The finish was ruinous. Holes 16 through 18 cost him eleven shots, produced no net par at all, and yielded two Stableford points between them. A separate three-hole bleed from the 3rd to the 5th, on a run taking in the course's hardest hole, added a further seven gross shots. There was no recovery phase. One blowup simply handed over to the next, for eighteen holes, with no gap in service.

Gregg Williams carded 89 at Oitavos Dunes on day one. It beat the 91 he had managed across his two previous visits, a new course best, and it put him top of the TEG 16 Green Jacket. The round was built on tidy stretches rather than heroics. He went two holes without dropping a shot through the 2nd and 3rd. He did it again through the short par-3 15th and the par-5 16th. Very little needed repairing, because very little had been broken.

His grip on the lead was briefly interrupted when David Mullin drew level for top spot after a bogey on the 6th. Williams pulled clear again as the round went on. Jon Baker stayed in touch throughout, matching him almost shot for shot, and finished three back. Two men at the top of the Jacket standings, then, separated by three strokes and very little else. Round two would have to sort it out.

Jon Baker assembled a new personal best at Oitavos Dunes on the opening day of the 2023 TEG Trophy, his third visit to the course. His gross 92 beat the 94 he had set across two earlier visits. That is two shots better than his mark from his last time out here. Progress, measured in the smallest available unit.

The improvement was built through 14 to 16. Three straight pars brought nine Stableford points and three holes without a gross shot dropped. The run included a par at the 15th, the easiest hole on the course, and a par-5 16th where the strokes cost him nothing at all.

Then came the 17th. A double bogey, on one of the harder holes out there, ended the sequence and took back ground he had only just gained. It was not enough to spoil the afternoon. The course-best round stood.