A THREE WOOD shot of 225 yards, beautifully controlled into a fresh breeze, guided the bail to within three feet of the 18th pin. From there, Nick Faldo stroked home the putt for an eagle three, a five under par 67 and the outright lead in the first round of the £1 million Volvo PGA Championship on a sodden West Course here yesterday.

It was a day when everything went right for another highly rated challenger, Colin Montgomerie. Which wasn't necessarily good for the big Scot, as repeatedly blocked shots landed him in all sorts of trouble, except at the long 12th. There, from trees on the right, he hit a three wood recovery to four feet and sank the putt for an eagle. "Lucky," he snapped, self deprecatingly.

Murphy's Law remained wickedly consistent, however, for Seve Ballesteros, notably in a remarkable experience at the 483 yard 12th. As Montgomerie had done two three balls earlier, the Spaniard pushed his drive into trees on the right, from where he felt sure he had spied an opening.

So, he chose a two iron to negotiate the remaining distance to the green. He wasn't to know that his ball lay on a stone when struck, it went almost straight up into the air, coming to rest in the foliage of a pine tree, about 30 feet above the ground.

As it happened, chief referee John Paramor was nearby, discussing a ruling involving the defending champion, Bernhard Langer. Paramor will be recalled as the referee involved in a heated argument with Ballesteros during the 1994 Volvo Masters at Valderrama where the Spaniard failed to convince him that he was entitled to relief from a burrowing animal.

"When I became aware of Seve's problem, I offered him my binoculars to see if he could identify his ball in the tree," Paramor said. "He established that it was, in fact, his ball, but unfortunately for him, it looked as if it was stuck there." On the credit side, however, it meant that he would incur only a one stroke penalty for an unplayable ball, as opposed to two strokes for a lost ball.

Ballesteros dropped another ball, still comfortably within the stipulated five minutes he would be allowed to search for his original. And as he chose a club to play his approach, a gust of wind blew the other ball out of the tree, knocking it to the ground beside him. With a resigned look, the Spaniard turned to Paramor and said. "I take it I must play the ball I've dropped." The referee nodded.

That cost Ballesteros a seven, and he went on to card another double bogey at the long 17th where a three wood second shot was pulled into the trees on the left. Almost predictably, the ball was deflected the wrong way, out of bounds.

Among Faldo's closest challengers is the unlikely figure of England's Paul Curry, who came here having missed three of his previous four cuts including last week's Benson and Hedges International. The 35 year old son of a former West Ham Shetfield United footballer Curry emulated Faldo by covering the last three holes in two under par.

In his case, however, the closing figures were birdie, par, birdie as opposed to par, par, eagle. "I just concentrated on keeping the ball in play and trying to get up and down as best I could," he said. In fact he did it rather well, wedging to 30 feet for a birdie at the long fourth and chipping to two feet for further birdies at the 12th and 18th.

There were seven birdies but also three bogeys on Curry's card. By comparison, Mark McNulty produced an error free display to share second place. Ever the tidy performer, McNulty was the only player to have a bogey free round on a testing day of intermittent rain and swirling winds. His birdies came at the sixth, 11th, 12th and 18th.

Faldo, meanwhile, was reviving happy memories of a US Tour win prior to his recent Masters triumph. "That was the best three wood I've hit since Doral," he said, referring to his second shot at the 18th. It will be recalled that with Greg Norman favoured to capture the Florida title, Faldo hit a majestic, death or glory three wood over water at the 72nd hole to provide a foretaste of more dramatic happenings to come at Augusta, 13 months later.

"It was a great way to finish," he said of yesterday's effort. "Into the wind, I couldn't have hit it further than that 230 yards is my maximum with a three wood normal conditions."

Yet, a buoyant Faldo almost certainly means that his putter was working well. On this occasion, it most certainly was at the fifth, sixth and seventh, where a 30 foot putt and another two from 20 feet found the target for three successive birdies.

"That's the best putting round I've had all season," he said. "Getting those three was a real tonic." There were three bogeys on his card at the difficult third, where he was in a green side bunker, at the equally difficult ninth, where a three iron also missed the green, and at the short 14th, where he was wide of the target with a six iron.

Langer's rules problem occurred at the ninth, where he erroneously assumed that he could take a free drop from a rabbit scrape in a hazard. But he recovered from that set back and the loss of another stroke at the long 12th, to cover the last three holes in birdie, par, birdie for a round of 73.

As evening closed in, one's thoughts were drawn to the rebirth on home soil of a British golfing hero and to the continuing torment of Ballesteros, who has graced this terrain with such distinction over the years.