Huge advantage for Larranaga

The Basque Eduardo Larranaga (c) Matthieu Vitré

The Basque Eduardo Larranaga started in style the penultimate tournament of the season. He fired 65, 7 under par to take a huge four shot margin over English duo, Andrew Colley and Tom Sherreard.

It is still summer in south of France and the temperature warm with almost 24°. But the wind and the tricky Seve Ballesteros course of Pont Royal defended itself pretty well as only 12 players out of 108 shot under par. The projected cut after one round is +2.

Larranaga had a perfect day with 5 birdies and one eagle. He did not make any mistake.

“I really played well today, long game as well as my putting. At 17^th for example, I hit my drive but I landed in the bunker but I made a great bunker shot, 2 meters of the pin. That was really a pleasure to play today!”

Alps Tour ranking leader, Nino Bertasio, signed for 71 as well as 4^th man in the order of merit, France’s Clément Berardo.

But Berardo needs a good result in Provence as his compatriot Thomas Elissalde and Austria’s Tobias Nemecz are a couple of hundred euros behind. Elissalde shot level par and Nemecz one over.