Royal Óbidos hosted the opening round of TEG 9, and the Trophy lead changed hands twice inside the first five holes. Gregg Williams drew level at the 4th, and did so while taking a double bogey on the hardest hole on the course. John Patterson then moved outright ahead at the par-5 5th. By the close, neither of them was there. Jon Baker sat atop the TEG 9 Trophy standings, level at the top, having gone nine strokes better than his previous visit here for a course personal best. David Mullin, with a course PB of his own, took the early lead in the TEG 9 Green Jacket.

Stuart Neumann had a rougher time of it. A triple bogey at the 14th opened a five-hole stretch that cost him 16 shots, capped by a quintuple bogey at the 15th. That is not a collapse so much as a standing order. It left him bottom of the TEG 9 Wooden Spoon race after round one, with three rounds in which to find a way out.

Alex Baker's opening round at Royal Óbidos on Friday produced a 115 gross. No score recorded at the course had ever been worse. The previous worst was 108, assembled across six prior visits by the field, and Baker beat it by seven strokes. It was also, comfortably, the poorest gross round of his own career.

Records of this kind are usually inched towards. Baker built his hole by hole, with the calm of a man following written instructions. At the 2nd, one of the harder holes on the course, he ran up a quadruple bogey. At the 12th, another tough hole, a quintuple bogey 9 went down without complaint. The low point arrived at the 14th, where he took 11. A septuple bogey. It is the worst score against par he has recorded anywhere, which took some doing. The round finished at +43. The best gross of the day was 15 over, which left a great deal of golf course between them.

He also dropped to last in the Wooden Spoon race after the 2nd hole. He was still there at the end. On this evidence, no fluke.

The TEG record book opened for John Patterson at Royal Óbidos, and the first thing he wrote in it was a 10. That came at the 4th, the hardest hole on the course. A sextuple bogey, worth nothing at all on the Stableford card.

Remarkably, he climbed anyway. A par at the par-5 5th brought four points and lifted him from third into the outright lead of the 2016 TEG Trophy. A debut round already gone wrong once, and a man leading the tournament. It did not last. At the short 15th he carded a quadruple bogey 7, which is the sort of hole that dismantles a card built on recovery rather than consistency.

There was late composure. Patterson went two holes without dropping a gross shot at the 16th and 17th, closing with a par and a birdie. The two big numbers had already been entered in ink.