The China Mail - Noren grabs early Bermuda lead with 61 as Long sets record

The 41-year-old from Stockholm made a tournament-record 11 birdies against a lone bogey at Port Royal in Southampton for his best 18-hole effort in 510 official PGA rounds.

"I'm very happy. It was great to get a 10-under," Noren said. "It was a long time ago I had a really low round, lower than maybe 5-6-under, so I feel good."

There was also a US PGA Tour record for American Adam Long, who broke the 31-year-old mark for consecutive fairways hit and stretched his streak to 69 before missing the fairway on the par-4 15th to end the record run.

"It was fun to have a little something, made Thursday a little more exciting than usual," Long said.

Noren, who shared third last month at Las Vegas for his best finish of the year, led by two strokes over Americans Dylan Wu, Vince Whaley and Robert Garrigus as the final groups teed off.

"It felt great in Vegas, had a chance to win but couldn't do it, but it at least gave me a good setup for next year and just improved my game and then I can get back to the big tournaments," Noren said.

"It has been a weird year. Really tough mentally in the spring. I had a pretty good fall and played some good tournaments over the winter on the DP World Tour as well."

Noren, chasing his first US PGA title, is a 10-time winner on the DP World Tour, most recently at the 2018 French Open.

Noren, who began on the back nine, birdied the 12th hole, reeled off three birdies in a row starting at the 14th and began a run of four consecutive birdies at the 18th.

He answered his lone bogey at the fifth with birdies on the sixth and par-5 seventh holes and closed with another at the ninth.

- Long fairway record -

Long, who fired a 66, broke the PGA Tour record for hitting consecutive fairways, a run of 59 set in 1992 by American Brian Claar.

Long started the event with 58 in a row, dating to the 17th hole of his final round of last month's Shriners Children's Open.

At last week's World Wide Technology Championship, Long became the first player since Claar in 1992 to hit every fairway in a tournament, going 56-for-56.

Long set the new mark by finding the fairway on the first and second holes at Port Royal.

"It was fun," Long said. "Had everyone not come up and said something to me the last 24 hours, I probably wouldn't think about it as much as I did. But it was in my mind, for sure, to start.

"Hit a hybrid on the first and then the second fairway is really hard to hit. Luckily it was kind of into the wind so I hit a driver and hung in the fairway somehow and perfectly in the middle.

"After that I was just kind of coasting."

The run ended at the 15th hole.

"It was a 3-wood that I kind of hit up in the air a little too spinny and the wind caught it," Long said. "Didn't quite go far enough so it stayed in the rough. Yeah, it was a little bit of relief that that part was over."

The round also marked the PGA Tour debut of 15-year-old Bermudan Oliver Betschart, the fifth-youngest player in tour history and youngest since 2013.

B.Chan--ThChM