Rod Pampling leads before storms hit

Australian Rod Pampling carded five birdies and an eagle for 15 points and the first-round lead at The International on Thursday, before storms suspended play with half the field still on the course.

Pampling leads fellow Australian Geoff Ogilvy and Argentina's Jose Coceres by one point in the modified Stableford scoring format that awards positive points for birdie or better and negative points for bogey and worse.

First-round play was suspended due to inclement weather and will resume on Friday morning at 7 a.m. local time. The second round will start at 9:30 a.m..

Spain's Jose Maria Olazabal and Tom Lehman are tied for fourth with 11 points, while Britain's Justin Rose, Brad Faxon and Tim Petrovic have nine points.

The format rewards aggressive play but Pampling believes that getting the ball into the fairway is key to a good score and he hit all 14 fairways and needed just 25 putts.

"Once you hit the fairways out here, you certainly can be a little more aggressive, and that's only if you go at a few more pins," he said. "Obviously with the rain we had on Wednesday, the course is playing a little bit softer."

Best known for leading the first round of the 1999 British Open and then missing the cut, Pampling made four birdies on the front nine of Castle Pines Golf Club's 7,619-yard layout.

The Australian then birdied the par-four 15th and eagled the par-five 17th for five points.

While Pampling turned in a bogey-free round, Ogilvy offset consecutive bogeys at the par-four ninth and 10th holes, each worth minus-one point, with eagles at the par-four third and the 17th.

He also carded three birdies between holes five through eight.

"I think the format suits me," said Ogilvy, who has 11 top-25 finishes in 19 events on the PGA Tour this season.

"I've always been a guy who makes six bogeys and six birdies and shoots even par, rather than shoot 18 pars and that's the name of the game here.

"You probably got to have two or three eagles in a week to really be there at the end in this tournament. Hopefully I've got a couple left in me."

Coceres was at the top of the leaderboard early on with a scoring frenzy on his front nine, which was the back nine at Castle Pines.

He birdied holes 11 through 13, then added a fourth at the par-four 15th. An eagle at 17 got him to 13 points through just eight holes before cooling off.

After six pars, Coceres bogeyed the par-four sixth, but finished his round with a birdie at the par-four ninth.

"Very happy for the first nine," he said.

"It's more difficult, the second nine, only one bogey, one birdie on the whole nine."

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