DEARBORN, Mich. - The conditions at the TPC of Michigan were nearly perfect Thursday.
So were some of the scores.
Gil Morgan had 8-under-par 64 that gave him a two-stroke lead and he was one of 39 players to break par in the opening round at the Senior Players Championship.
Days of rain leading up the start of the Champions Tour major left the greens soft and the Jack Nicklaus-designed course ripe for the picking.
Add to that virtually windless conditions, and it became clear early on that scores would be low.
"I think, as a player, you kind of watch the scoreboard to kind of give you an idea of how receptive the golf course is," said Morgan, who went birdie-eagle-birdie to finish the round. "So if you see some numbers up there, you just feel like, "Maybe if I play well, I can get in that same category."'
And that's exactly what Morgan did, tying Hale Irwin for the best opening round at the Senior Players, the third of five Champions Tour majors.
On No. 17, his 7-wood from 220 yards landed 12 feet from the hole. His eagle putt followed a 5-footer for birdie on No. 16. He made a 15-footer for birdie at No. 18, completing 30 on the back nine and a round with only one blemish: bogey on the par-3 fourth.
Morgan held a two-stroke lead over five players, including Tom Kite and 2001 champion Allen Doyle.
"This course doesn't give up many good scores," said Kite, who played a bogey-free round. "Right now, it's playing fairly benign because of the rain you've had around this area."
Fred Gibson, Doug Tewell and Mike McCullough, who tied for second a year ago, also shot 66s.
GREATER MILWAUKEE OPEN: Jay Don Blake wasn't thinking about taking the lead at PGA Tour event in Milwaukee when he saved par with a 9-foot putt on his final hole.
"I wanted to shoot a 29 on one side, I wasn't real worried about being on the leaderboard," said Blake, whose 6-under 64 at soggy Brown Deer Park left him one shot in front of Kirk Triplett.
Blake's luck started to turn when he birdied the par-5 18th, his ninth hole. It was one of six birdies in an eight-hole stretch.
"It's kind of nice to write 29 on your scorecard. You don't do that too often," said Blake, whose only PGA Tour victory came 12 years ago at the 1991 Shearson Lehman Brothers Open.
Blake made a 40-foot birdie putt on the 485-yard, par-4 fourth. Shigeki Maruyama, who won the GMO two years ago, was at 66 along with Jerry Kelly, Joel Edwards, Brett Quigley and Kenneth Staton.
SCOTTISH OPEN: Ernie Els posted an early 7-under 64 that held up for a two-stroke lead in the rain-suspended opening round of the European PGA Tour event in Luss.
