Torrance's game is as strong as the course

Sam Torrance has been something of a wild rover in recent months, his nomadic existence taking him from the full European Tour one week and on to the European Seniors Tour the next.

Not that the peripatetic lifestyle has affected his game too much, as he demonstrated in the first round of the AIB Irish Seniors Open at the Heritage at Killenard, Co Laois, yesterday.

"It feels just like the old days," remarked Torrance, playing competitively for the fifth straight week.

On a day when a stiff breeze interlaced with heavy showers accentuated the challenge, the Scot shot a four-under-par 68 that left him menacingly just a shot adrift of leader Jim Rhodes, one of only two players in the field to negotiate the tough Seve Ballesteros layout without dropping a shot.

For the Irish contingent, it was, like the weather, a mixed affair. Denis O'Sullivan, already a tournament winner in Barbados this season, and Paul Leonard each birdied the 18th to sign for one-under-par 71s to lead the home challenge, while Eamonn Darcy overcame back-to-back bogeys in mid-round for level par 72.

However, Des Smyth, the pre-tournament favourite, had a strange old round. On the 10th, a par five of 502 yards, he hit driver-driver (an approach from 250 yards into the wind) to 10 feet and sank the eagle putt to move to three-under-par for his round and was, as he put it, "cruising".

Then, on the 12th, from the middle of the fairway and with a five-iron in his hand, disaster struck. He blocked his approach right into the lake, and ran up a double-bogey six. On the 13th, his drive kicked left into a drain and he suffered a bogey; and he also bogeyed the 15th, eventually signing for a 73.

"I suppose it was a mini-collapse. I hit a lot of bad shots at the wrong time," said Smyth, a two-time winner on the Champions Tour in the US this season. "I'll need a different frame of mind now, playing catch-up. I've a lot of work to do. You can make up ground if you go for your shots and they come off. But you can do damage on this course too. There are some great, tough holes."

All in all, it was a good introduction to tournament golf for this new course which had the players raving about its conditioning. "I'd give it 12 out of 10," observed Christy O'Connor Jnr, while Torrance claimed: "You couldn't get a better conditioned golf course. It is just immaculate, and it's a fantastic layout. This course is good enough to stage anything, up to the Ryder Cup."

The Ryder Cup won't be coming here soon, but the test provided for the seniors yesterday was such that only 18 of 76 players managed to beat par.

Rhodes (59), an Englishman whose last win came in last year's Jersey Seniors Open, emerged as a somewhat unlikely leader, holing out from a greenside bunker for a finishing birdie for a 67. "I've been playing reasonably this season, without being spectacular," he remarked.

Yet, all he has to do is cast a glance over his shoulder, and particularly at Torrance, to be reminded that the hard work still has to be done.

"My approach is just to go out to play the best that you can, and score the best that you can," said Torrance, who moved into contention with late birdies on the 15th, where he holed from 20 feet, and the 16th, where he hit a sandwedge to three feet. As he's proven in his time, Torrance is not one to shirk a challenge.