Jens Fahrbring holds a two-stroke lead after the first day of the Hopps Open de Provence following a seven under par round of 65 at Golf International de Pont Royal.
The 38-year-old leads by two in the South of France, with Englishman Bailey Gill in second place after a five under par opening round of 67 at the Seve Ballesteros-designed layout.
The Swede, a two-time European Challenge Tour winner, is currently 63rd on the Road to Mallorca Rankings and in need of a strong result in order to force his way into the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final supported by The R&A, where the top 45 players will vie for one of 20 DP World Tour cards for the 2023 season and he got off to the perfect start in France.
“I got off to a pretty quick start,” he said. “I hit it close on one and two so quite easy birdies to get the round going. Made a great par save on three to keep me going and then I hit another one close on four and five. I just managed to continue to keep it up all day so I'm really, really pleased with the round.
“It's my first time here so we played a practice round in windy conditions. I found the course very, very tough. It was a little bit easier today, not as much wind but it's a very, very tough course. You've got to keep it in the fairway, you've got to hit some really quality shots off the tee and into some greens as well.”
Fahrbring has struggled with his putting in recent weeks but highlighted his work on the greens as key to his opening round today, despite not feeling entirely comfortable with his all-round game.
“It's funny, sometimes when you shoot a low score, I didn't really feel that comfortable with my game, at all,” he said. “But my putting, I struggled on the greens for about six weeks now, so today was nice to make some good eight-footers, and some 20-25-footers as well.
“Some days, you see the lines, you hit them, it feels free in your stroke. Everything just feels good. Today was one of those days.”
There is a group of six players sharing third place on four under par, including Frenchman Robin Sciot-Siegrist, English duo Nathan Kimsey and Jonathan Thomson, South Africa’s Deon Germishuys, Sweden’s Joel Sjöholm and Scotland’s Liam Johnston.
Fahrbring’s second round will begin at 1:50pm local time on Friday when he tees it up alongside countryman Adam Blomme and France’s Alexandre Liu.
