When it comes to links golf, it’s not the answer that is blowing in the wind, more a series of mind-mangling questions. The defences were certainly up at Castle Stuart yesterday and you half expected the greens to be fortified by a portcullis and drawbridge. As Mother Nature got her bellows going, the boisterous, bamboozling gusts that whipped up during first day of the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open produced the kind of large figures that used to be scribbled down by the seamstress of the Roly Polys.

Sixes here, sevens there, eights flying about everywhere? Fifer Peter Whiteford began his day with a crippling nine on the very first hole while Jin Jeong, the Korean who won the Amateur Championship at Muirfield in 2010 and has not made a cut in 16 tour events this season, had two eights in a back nine of 48 en route to an eye-watering 88.

It was a flummoxing day that required patience and a sturdy mental resolve as the yardage book went to pot and balls oscillated on the greens. On one hole, a 5-iron from 145 yards would land short. On another, an 8-iron from 210 yards would fly through the green. That’s just par for the course in the links game but plenty participants were blown off course. Keeping the heid while others were losing theirs was key and Scott Hend and Felipe Aguilar did just that as they harnessed the conditions to good effect and emerged with three-under 69s, the only sub-70 rounds to be posted, to finish a shot ahead of a chasing pack made up of eight players.

The great Jack Nicklaus once noted that “golfers are masochists” – he probably wasn’t the only person to say that - and frontrunner Hend clearly enjoyed this punishing, yet gratifying, exercise that was a bit like a golfing Fifty Shades of Grey. “I love it, it beats your head in and it kicks you around but sometimes you get it back,” said the Australian, who bolstered his assault on the standings with an eagle on his 11th hole.

In the three previous stagings of the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart, in 2011, 2012 and 2013, the winning tally has been a cumulative 53-under. Without much breeze during those years, the course had been there for the taking as the birdies flew in wild abundance. Yesterday it bared its teeth. A couple of years ago, Graeme McDowell caused some muttering and mumbling in these airts when he suggested the Scottish Open had lost some of its prestige by coming to the “easy” links of Castle Stuart. After playing here in 2011, he didn’t come back until this week but, despite the buffeting, the former US Open champion has been wooed by the Castle Stuart charms. “It’s a helluva lot more narrow than I remember it,” he said. “It’s a really nice golf course. People are going to say I’m full of s**t having criticised it pretty heavily and now I’m saying it’s good. But I’m allowed to change my mind and I like the golf course. I’m enjoying it even though it was tough today.”

The posse on two-under was strengthened by Padraig Harrington, the triple major winner, who bounded in late in the day with two birdies and no bogeys on a fine back nine as he carded a 70. “I’m exhausted and that was a long, long day,” he wheezed after a real battle of attrition that lasted for some five-and-a-half hours. Harrington clearly relished the challenge, though. “This gave us a big test and it was a tough stress. But these are my conditions. If had to play golf in that every day, it would be a lot easier for me."

For returning hero Russell Knox, the Inverness exile who is playing a Scottish Open at Castle Stuart for the first time, the homecoming was quite a shock to the system. “I haven’t played in many tougher rounds than that,” said Knox after a 72 that started with a brace of birdies at the first and second and ended with a three-putt bogey on the last. “It was like goofy golf and it was almost unplayable. The last hole, for instance, was a terrible set up. 600 yards into a 30mph wind? I didn’t agree with that. They could have moved us up a tee.”

Phil Mickelson, the Scottish Open champion at Castle Stuart in 2013, had to settle for a four-over 76 during a rigorous examination which the Californian described as a “fair test.”

Two shots further back on 78 was Colin Montgomerie. It was perhaps not the occasion to pose the question, as one scribe famously did to a tousled, gale-battered Monty a few years ago, ‘Colin, was the wind a factor?’