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GOLF LADIES IRISH OPEN:THE UNPREDICTABILITY of links golf is also its greatest attraction. After all, with some superstars of the women's game competing in yesterday's first round of the AIB Ladies Irish Open at Portmarnock Links, who in their right mind would have plucked the name of Federica Piovano from the hat and forecast that she would sit pretty atop the leader-board?

But so it was at day's end, the 26-year-old Italian's opening round 67, five under par, giving her a two-stroke advantage over Norway's Suzann Pettersen, the world's number three, who hits the ball a country mile off the tee and has a touch around the greens that has all the delicacy of a surgeon using a scalpel.