Ryder Cup trio Lee Westwood, Darren Clarke and Henrik Stenson made early inroads on the second morning of The 142nd Open Championship at Muirfield.
Overnight watering of the rapidly-drying greens, aided by some dawn mist which was quickly burned off by bright sunshine again, provided some assistance to the early starters.
Westwood seized the opportunity and after declaring after yesterday's one over 71 he was most happy with his putting he proved it was not all talk with two opening birdies, holing from ten feet at the second.
It would have been even better had he not rolled his birdie attempt at the third past the hole from 12 feet.
He dumped his tee shot at the 226 yard fourth into a bunker but splashed out to five feet to save par.
Stenson birdied the first, which was the hardest hole on the course yesterday but was playing downwind today, to move to two under.
Clarke put together a run of three successive birdies from the third to take him into red figures at two under.
However, he lost that momentum with a quadruple-bogey eight at the 461 yard sixth after taking three to get out of a greenside bunker having found rough off the tee and hacking out on to the fairway.
World Number One Tiger Woods, two under overnight, opened with a par having holed an eight foot putt after coming up ten yards short of the green.
The sixth also caused problems for Stenson, who had double bogey there to drop him back to even par but he holed from 15 feet for birdie at the next.
With the wind having changed direction, the 559 yard fifth - where yesterday South African Justin Harding recorded a drive of 378 yards - was playing much tougher.
Westwood hit driver-driver to reach the green only to see his ball curl away and roll off into a bunker, but splashed out to within 12 feet and birdied to go two under and three behind leader Zach Johnson, who does not tee off until 3.07pm.
Woods picked up his first birdie of the day at the 377 yard third, curling in a 12 footer to move to three under.
