"There was a lot of carnage going on what's he doing over there?"

The opening morning at Royal County Down looked picture perfect with the golf course nestled at the foot of the Mourne Mountains in glorious early sunshine. But despite the apparently benign conditions, the Newcastle links showed its teeth.

2007 Amgen Irish Open champion Pádraig Harrington cut an exhausted figure as he collapsed into a chair in the interview area after chiselling out a two-over 73 which leaves him five shots behind early leader Will Enefer.

Harrington made a positive start with a birdie on the 12th and he followed dropped shots on 13 and 17 with a superb eagle on the par-5 1st which put him back into red figures for the tournament. He bogeyed the second and three-putted the par-3 4th before dropping another shot on the 8th.

There were some miraculous pars on the card also including from a near lost ball on the 3rd and from 90 yards on his 18th.

“Always good to finish with a par when you’re struggling down the last,” laughed a jaded Harrington.

“Yeah, it was a tough day. Greens are very, very fast. Playing fast. So just made conditions, even though you couldn’t have asked for nicer conditions, it was still pretty tough. I made some incredible up-and-downs and most of my drop shots were kind of the better holes I played, a bit innocuous. A couple of lob-wedges. A strange day but certainly some miracle up-and-downs. Every time you listed your head up and looked around, you got some hope because you could see a lot of carnage going on. What’s he doing over there?

“So yeah, it was a tough day but it was actually a day to have a little bit of a look around and see that the scoring wasn’t going so well for everyone and to see that players were struggling in it. Even though the conditions, really while it wasn’t warm, it wasn’t exactly really windy, was it.

“It wasn’t too bad at all. The greens are very fast. I know it’s extreme but like Thomas Detry’s ball blew off the green on 8 and into an unplayable lie.”

Scoring has proved difficult despite the pleasant weather conditions with no player able to go lower than three-under at any point during the first round and Harrington believes everyone is enjoying a different test to what is the norm on both the PGA Tour and European Tour.

“I think they embrace it on the week that we’re in. I’m not sure they would want to spend their — every tournament around these conditions but they certainly see this as a different week. It’s a European thing, we get thrown up different places around the world that you get all sorts of conditions. So they come here and they go, isn’t this a great event. Let’s get the head down and get on with it.

“But they do find it difficult. It’s not natural to a lot of guys, and as I said, this one, the greens, as I said, just seemed very, very fast for — they would be much faster now than an open, even though they probably say they are the same speed, they are quite pure, the greens, they are very smooth. There seems to be a little bit of grain in them.

“So you get anything going downhill, downwind, it’s hard to chip the ball close. You know, we were saying that out there, if a chip kind of moves and it looks like it’s going three, four feet, all of a sudden it’s eight feet, just gets down that slope a bit. It’s the challenge that they expect and what we kind of want.”

Harrington is used to going low on the Champions Tour. Under normal circumstances two over would be languishing towards the foot of a seniors leaderboard, even two-under wouldn’t be anything special but he is pleased to have not played himself out of contention this week.

“I’d like to have played better. But when I look at the bogeys, as I said, two of them, three of them are 100-yard shots that I made bogey off, and the other was a three-putt, and one more bogey where I was well and truly — well, I got under my 8-iron shot. Missed a 4-footer.

“I could have avoided the bogeys, no problem. But as I said there was a couple of all-time up-and-downs out there. So like myself and Nick, I could have had a lost ball on No. 3, is it, and I got it up-and-down. We were going over there and we were getting the clock started like, okay, like ready, off you go sort of thing.

“You’re really thinking this could be a lost ball and we found it and I got up-and-down. Same on the back of 6. I got a great up-and-down out of the downslope and the heavy rough. The lads were suitably impressed with my ability to get it up-and-down as I was going around.”