Patrick Reed's opening 65 moved him to seven under and handed him a one-shot lead after day one of the DP World Tour Championship, Dubai.
Here, we take a look at what some of the chasing pack had to say after their opening rounds.
Scott Hend (66, -6)
"I'll take a good round any day and I'll take a good tournament, doesn't matter where it is in the season. The way the seasons are at the moment, it's non-stop because next week we start up again in Hong Kong. There's not really any break and you try to play good when you can, play good when you get it because it doesn't happen every week. Three days is a long way and this golf course can throw up anything. I'm just going to go about doing my job and try to do the best I can. That's all I can ask of myself. Probably had a couple months since Crans of not playing well. I think I've found the reason why that is."
Ryan Fox (67, -5)
"Nice to take advantage of some pretty decent golf out there. It's been a little bit of a struggle the last three weeks. Just happy to be here and happy to be playing some good golf again. The goal at the start of the year was just to be here next year and through the middle I gave myself a really good opportunity to play in a couple of Majors, a WGC and now all the Final Series and to be in the top 60 at the end of the season, that was the big goal at the end of the year. Very happy to achieve it and hopefully I can tick off a couple more places this week with some good golf."
Matthew Fitzpatrick (67, -5)
"I feel like I've been playing quite nicely and I've had a good stretch of weeks. Coming here again you're full of confidence, knowing the place like the back of your hand and doing so well the year before. It sets up for an exciting week and you never know. I've been playing quite well and it would be nice to finish the year on a high. You know what you've achieved before, you've had similar sort of putts, you know where the green is and all that sort of stuff. I feel that gives me an advantage having done so well the year before. You go into the tournament with confidence and I've been playing pretty nicely leading up to this week. Just try to take it in stride."
Alexander Björk (67, -5)
"It's nice to have a good start. I feel like I've been struggling a little bit the last month, maybe playing a little too difficult. I was trying to get back to playing easy this time and hopefully I can keep doing that the rest of the week. But it's a nice position and nice to have a good start. I think I played quite nice all over the round. I played good the first nine holes, had a few bad bogeys but holed a few good putts on 11 and 12 and kept going the last nine holes. Quite happy with that and the way I played today. It's very exciting to be here. That's one of the goals I was setting up before this season: that I wanted to play here in Dubai. I've been watching this tournament many, many times on TV when I was younger so it's very nice to finally be here and have a good first round."
Paul Dunne (67, -5)
"It would be great to win another tournament. I can't really control where I finish in the Race to Dubai, depends how everyone else plays. Just got to try to do the best I can this week and check on Monday morning. It's fairly solid. I hit maybe a couple of loose shots in the middle but I hit them at the right time on holes I could get away with it. Apart from that my putting was good, my pace putting was great - which is key around this course - and I was hitting my numbers. Everything felt good. I was striking the ball well, rolling it nicely. So if golf feels like that every day, I'll be happy."
