Andrew Johnston overcame a bumpy front nine to fire a 4-under-par 36-31=67 in round one of the Italian Open at Olgiata, slotting in at T4 after the morning session and three back from leader Tapio Pulkkanen.
Beef birdied his opening the hole, the 10th, and parred the next but then went bogey-birdie-par-bogey-bogey to slip to +1. He balanced the books with a gain at 17 and then produced a fast finish with red circles at 2, 5, 8 and 9. The 30-year-old, who last played this course back in 2011 (T64), has two top tens in his last four European Tour starts but said he didn’t have his best stuff today. “It was one of them strange days on the golf course where I didn’t really hit the ball great. But the score, made a lot of birdies, and you could tell by sort of what my front nine, which was the back, a few birdies, a few bogeys, and I kept it in play a bit better off the tee on the other nine. I’m going to go to the range and see if I can work out why I was missing it a bit. And then I’m going to go eat probably my fourth carbonara of the week so far. I think that’s the plan.”