VIRGINIA WATER, England, 27 May 2005 — Peter Lawrie of Ireland shot a 5-under 67 to take an early lead yesterday in the first round of the BMW Championship at Wentworth.

Lawrie was a stroke ahead of Australians Nick O’Hern and Wade Ormsby.

Other big names slipped in one of the European tour’s top events.

Ernie Els, who has won the World Match Play a record six times on this course, shot 73. No. 3 Els has never won this event.

Thomas Bjorn, Colin Montgomerie and Luke Donald, who made a double-bogey seven on the final hole, recorded scores of 71. Miguel Jimenez and Nick Faldo shot 70s.

Lawrie started at 7 a.m., relishing the early tee time.

“The greens were in perfect condition at that hour, so you just had to take advantage of it and that’s what I did,” he said.

He birdied the first hole with a 25-foot putt, and the long fourth with two putts. He birdied seven and nine, and in between he holed a sand wedge approach at the 8th.

“I hit straight at the pin and it went straight in,” he said.

Els birdied the fourth, bogeyed the fifth and seventh, and then ran off 11 straight pars, failing to birdie either the 17th or 18th _ reachable par-5s.

“I played well on the back nine, but I made some mistakes on the front,” he said. “I didn’t play terrible. I had chances but missed the putts. The greens were perfect but I just didn’t have the speed right.”

Montgomerie, the champion in 1998, 1999 and 2000, told a similar story. He birdied the fourth, followed it immediately with a bogey. Then came 12 pars before another birdie on the last hole.

“I made too many pars, not enough birdies. I didn’t hit the ball close enough to the pin. I was about 30 feet away all day,” he said. “But the putt at the last was good, a 10-footer which broke about a foot.” Montgomerie still hopes to play in next month’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst. He is ranked No. 53 and needs to get into the world’s top 50 by the end of this event. A top-five finish would do it, and he may be able to finish worse than that and still break through, depending on what others do.

“I love Pinehurst. I’m playing well enough to do well in the tournament. I just have to get in the darn thing,” he said.

He said he still planned to play the final international qualifying event for Europeans at Walton Heath on June 6, if he needed to. The US Open is June 16-19.