Lars van der Vight best Dutch player after the first round
Due to yesterday’s weather, the first round of the KLM Open was only completed today. Taking stock after everyone had played at least 18 holes: for many Dutch players, making the cut will be a tough task, while France’s Julien Guerrier officially goes into the books as the leader after the first round.
Guerrier made the most of the very difficult conditions yesterday with a round of 65 (-6). No one managed to match that score today. One notable performance was Marcel Siem’s bogey-free round over two days, including a hole-in-one, which placed him at -4 on the leaderboard.
‘Good shots were rewarded today’
The best Dutch player after 18 holes was, somewhat surprisingly, Lars van der Vight. The 23-year-old from Brabant, who progressed from the Pro Golf Tour to the HotelPlanner Tour in his first year as a professional and mainly plays his tournaments there this season, made the most of the better conditions this morning compared to yesterday. With five birdies, he erased his +2 from the first day and, soon after finishing his opening round, started his second round as tied fifth at -3. Due to the earlier delay, that second round will also only be completed tomorrow.
“Today, good shots were rewarded, and that wasn’t really the case yesterday. With the strong wind then, conditions were so far from normal that it was very difficult to judge whether I was actually playing well. But apparently the form is there, as this morning showed,” said Van der Vight.
Work to do
Joost Luiten had already finished his round yesterday and is also still in a very good position at -2. The tournament ambassador will not be back in action today until around 4:30 p.m.
Also worth mentioning were the rounds of amateurs Scott Woltering and Pieter Werner. Woltering did well to keep his score together today and, at +3, can still hope to extend his stay at The International. Another amateur, 16-year-old Pieter Werner, went to bed yesterday with -2 on his scorecard. Today, he had considerably more to deal with during the remainder of his round, but at +3 he was still one of the better Dutch players.
Of the fifteen Dutch players, most still have quite a bit of work to do if they want to start in the third round tomorrow. That also applies to Darius van Driel (+3) and Mike Toorop (+7), the other Dutch players besides Luiten who have full playing rights on the DP World Tour this season.
