Graeme McDowell vowed not to get carried away after starting his 2017 campaign with a purposeful opening round in the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters.
While Richie Ramsay was leading the Scottish challenge with a four-under 68, McDowell tucked himself into a share of third with a 66 to sit two shots behind early leader Bradley Dredge.
McDowell arrived in Doha ranked 91st in the world and admitting he faced "a long road" back to the sort of golf which produced 10 European Tour titles and four consecutive Ryder Cup appearances.
However, the former US Open champion looked close to his best as he took advantage of unusually calm conditions to put himself into contention.
"My expectations were fairly low, I suppose, coming in," said McDowell, who had failed to card a single birdie in the pre-tournament pro-am. "My game felt a little bit rusty the last week or so and I was expecting tougher conditions.
"Now that I've got off to a good start, I've got to keep my expectations in check and not get too far ahead of myself, just keep calm and keep enjoying myself and stay patient and see what happens.
"First round and tournament of the year and to birdie 10, 11, 12 was a special way to start and certainly got me in a very relaxed frame of mind. There are lots of good players here and I'll definitely keep the head down and hope to keep playing well.”
Dredge was fourth in Qatar a year ago and underlined his fondness for this neck of the woods with an eight-birdie card which left him a shot clear of Mikko Korhonen.
Ramsay’s 68 included three birdies in four holes from the 10th while Marc Warren was a shot further back on three-under. Paul Lawrie, a former Qatar Masters winner, opened with a 70.
Elsewhere, Jimmy Gunn, the Dornoch exile, secured the largest cheque of his professional career with a second place finish in the Web.com Tour’s weather-disrupted Bahamas Great Abaco Classic.
Gunn, who finished with a 13-under aggregate, picked up a cheque for $64,800 which eclipsed the $62,000 he earned at the 2015 US Open. Gunn had led the field after 36-holes but was overhauled by eventual winner, Andrew Landry, on a long final day which required players to contest 28 holes after a series of delays.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here