Lawrie shares Andalucia lead

Pair shoot five under to top leaderboard

Lawrie: Change of coach

First round leaderboard:
GB & Ire unless stated
-5 Paul Lawrie
-5 S Kjeldsen (Nor)
-4 I Garrido (Spa)
-4 B Dredge
-4 J Luiten (Ned)
-4 J Guerrier (Fra)
-4 M Brown (NZ)
-4 D Vancsik (Arg)
-4 P Archer

Defending champion Soren Kjeldsen and former Open champion Paul Lawrie share the lead after the opening round of the Andalucia Open.

The pair carded five-under-par rounds of 65 to lead a bunch of seven players by a shot at the Parador Club in Malaga.

Kjeldsen, who is looking forward to his second Masters appearance in two weeks' time, made three putts of around 20 feet at the first three holes and although he made two bogeys coming home, he also had four other birdies.

Lawrie similarly picked up shots at the first, second and third although, having started at the 10th, they came in the middle of his round.

Britain's last major winner - Lawrie triumphed at Carnoustie almost 11 years ago - was only one-under-par when he started the run but another birdie at the seventh saw him top the leaderboard.

The Scot has been resting for the last six weeks and attributes his form to a return to coach Adam Hunter after he parted company with Bob Torrance.

Hospital

"I gave Bob a ring and he was great," he said. "I learnt a lot - you do from every coach - but I didn't think I was getting enough out of it for the time it took to see him."

However, things have not been great for Hunter recently after he was diagnosed with leukaemia.

"He's doing all right. It's been a terrible time, but he's out of hospital now, so fingers crossed he's on the road to recovery," Lawrie added.

The chasing group comprises England's Phillip Archer, Welshman Bradley Dredge, New Zealander Mark Brown, Dutchman Joost Luiten, Spaniard Ignacio Garrido, Argentina's Daniel Vancsik and France's former British amateur champion Julien Guerrier.

Louis Oosthuizen, still chasing a place in the Masters, opened with a 67 while last week's winner Rhys Davies finished on level par alongside Darren Clarke.

Disqualified

Meanwhile, playing partners Borja Etchart of Spain and Norwegian Eirik Tage Johansen were both disqualified following their rounds.

The former was accused of wrongly replacing his ball on two greens and the other for not reporting it to officials before signing the scorecard.

Johansen and former Ryder Cup player Andrew Coltart, the third member of the group, spoke to each other about the way Etchart put his ball back.

But as the one marking the card, Johansen had a responsibility to bring the matter to the attention of a referee and because he signed the card and handed it in he too was told he was out of the £896,000 event.

"The two players have seen me doing it wrongly and if that's what they say I take it," said Etchart.

"But I think I have done nothing wrong. I may have made a mistake, but I think they made a big mistake by not reporting that.

"They didn't mention anything during the round."