GEORGE Coetzee and Ryan Fox opened up a one-shot lead at the top of a congested leaderboard after the first round of the Amundi Open de France.
South African Coetzee fired his lowest opening round of the season to set the target at six-under par with his round of 65.
The four-time Euorpean Tour winner said: “It was almost perfect. Played really well. Just dropped one on 17, but I can’t complain.
“It’s nice to be in the mix again. It’s been kind of a hard, long year, but it feels like the game is coming along nicely,” added Coetzee, whose last win came in Tshwane Open, in March last year.
“ I think you find which holes you can attack when you get to the green. There’s no real aggressive game plan on this golf course.
“Just keep the ball in play and give yourself opportunities, and there’s obviously a couple of holes where you’ve got to be careful,” added Coetzee, who has won the Sunshine Tour Order of Merit three times in the last four years.
Fox matched Coetzee in the afternoon as the New Zealander also carded seven birdies and a single bogey to join him at the summit.
“I’m pretty happy,” said Ryan Fox. “This is a golf course that can kick you pretty quickly. I played really solid today. Holed some putts.
“I played those tough holes, that closing stretch, really well. I could have potentially grabbed a couple more on those last four, which is always a bonus – but very happy to walk away with a 65 around here.
“You’ve got to drive it really well. For the most part I did a really good job of keeping it in play,” said Fox, whose sole Euorpean Tour win came in the ISPS Handa World Super 6 in Perth, in Feburary.
“A couple holes I hit poor tee shots and I managed to scramble and make pars from there, which is nice,” Fox added. “But yeah, you just keep yourself out of trouble.”
Benjamin Hebert – currently the leading French player on the Race to Dubai – delighted the home fans at Le Golf National with a birdie on the last to sit one shot off the lead alongside American Kurt Kitayama and Scotland’s Richie Ramsay.
Hebert said: “I putted very well today. I’ve worked on my putting since the start of the week.
“I had a private lesson with David Orr, who is a big putting expert. We changed some stuff and it works very well. So, I’m pretty happy.
“I feel good support from the French public. We have only one tournament a year, so it’s very important for us to represent this week.”
Ramsay has been fighting issues over spending time away from his young daugher over the past couple of seasons – the 35-year-old Scot only secured his card in the last event of 2018, and has spoken about possibly retiring at 40, or at least taking a whole year out of the game.
“It’s obviously a fantastic golf course. A little bit different this year. A bit colder, a bit softer, so the course is playing quite long,” said Ramsay whose best result of the season is tied for sixth in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
“It’s a joy to play a golf course like this, because it just tests the whole part of your game and mentally, obviously there’s a lot of water out there, so you have to be very committed to your shots,” Ramsay added.
Victor Perez became the latest player from France to win on the European Tour when he took the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship title last month.
And the Dundee-based Frenchman is just two shots off the lead at four under, alongside South African trio Darren Fichardt, Jaco Van Zyl and Justin Walters, plus Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts, Denmark’s Nicolai Hogaard and Kalle Samooja, from Finland.
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