Italian Open presented by Regione Emilia-Romagna - Day one digest

Everything you need to know from day one at Adriatic Golf Club Cervia.

Dylan Frittelli almost made a stunning start, Gunner Wiebe was bored and the home crowd had an Italian co-leader to cheer.

Here is everything you need to know from Thursday in Ravenna.

Pavan shares top honours

Andrea Pavan denied local knowledge played a part, insisting "The last time I played here was 20 years ago", but a superb bogey-free 64 left him sharing the lead on seven under par with Wiebe and Sebastian Friedrichsen. Gavin Green and Marcus Kinhult were a shot behind while Francesco Laporta (five under), Jacopo Vecchi Fossa (four under) and Matteo Manassero (three under) added to a good first day for the home nation.

Frittelli goes close

“A par here’s a good result” – seems nobody told Frittelli, who went within a foot of an eagle at the first…

Boring, boring Gunner

Wiebe, though, was in no mood to over-excite the spectators, the American happy to instead produce a “boring” bogey-free 64. “I hit a ton of fairways and a ton of greens,” he said. “I had two hot stretches, I birdied four in a row on the front and three out of my last four on the back. Boring golf for me is fun, I prefer to play boring golf if I can. Today was just a nice, boring day, which sounds way worse than it is. I’m begging for boring.”

Manassero welcomes next generation

Matteo Manassero recalled “annoying” the participants at the tournament as a child and was delighted to see the tradition continue. After shooting 68 and signing autographs for a host of young fans, he said: “I was like them, exactly the same. I would be running around the Italian Opens, kind of annoying everybody that was playing! It’s really nice to see a lot of young kids running around, asking for a high five and being involved in the game. Sometimes they are brought to the golf course to see, but in this case it seems like they really wanted to get their parents out of the house this morning. That’s something really cool.”

One way or another

There’s more than one way to make birdie, as Rikuya Hoshino proved – first sticking his tee shot at the fourth to two feet…

…then holing from 30 at the 13th.