FROM the base camp of the media centre here at Close House, you can watch distant figures trudging wearily up the face of the precipitous opening hole.
Forget the British Masters title. They’ll probably dish out the Edmund Hillary Memorial Salver at the prize giving ceremony on Sunday night.
“The caddies will suffer more than me,” said Alvaro Quiros in sympathetic tones as the Spaniard praised the sterling efforts of the bagmen as they heaved and humped the various tools of the trade up and down Close House’s mountainous terrain. The stroke saver booklets have probably been replaced by an Ordnance Survey map.
Quiros certainly got his bearings here in the north east and a sprightly six-under 64, which was inspired by an early burst of four birdies in his first six holes, had him moving in the right direction as he finished just a shot off the early pace set by South Africa’s George Coetzee and Englishman Tyrell Hatton.
There was a time not so long ago when Quiros was one of the most recognisable figures on the European Tour.
His swashbuckling style, rampaging frontrunning and barnstorming blooters off the tee earned him plaudits and prizes in abundance. Between 2006 and 2011, he won six tour titles, flirted with the possibility of a Ryder Cup appearance and reached a career high of 21st on the world rankings.
Rather like the topography of the course here, it was a case of what goes up must come down for Quiros, however, and the last few years have been characterised by toil and trouble. He made a return to the dreaded qualifying school for the first time in a decade last season to try and regain his full playing rights, but failed.
The golfing gods can be a funny lot, though. Amid the debris of the general despair, Quiros, with a real bolt from the blue, won on the main tour for the first time in six years in Sicily this year when he was ranked a lowly 703rd on the global order.
Cue a rousing return to form? Well, not quite. He missed the next eight cuts in a row and only ended that wretched run with a share of 62nd in last weekend’s Portugal Masters.
What Quiros will do next is anybody’s guess. Even the man himself is not quite sure. “I wasn’t playing well before I won and I haven’t played well since I won,” he said. “Basically, the main issue that I constantly have is that I don’t feel confident in the way I hit the ball. That’s why it’s so difficult to get confidence and to really believe that you are able to do what you want to do.”
The soothing grace for Quiros is that he is back on the tour, not scrambling away in an attempt to regain his playing rights.
“This run is not frustrating,” added the 34-year-old. “What was frustrating was the six years of bad golf I had been playing. Winning and then playing badly again is not frustrating because I am on the tour. It’s not nice but I prefer to be here on the main tour and fighting instead of being on the Challenge Tour.
“But playing badly before the win and playing badly again after the win means something. I need to search in a different way because clearly I am wrong. My route is not perfect.”
Coetzee’s route to the top, meanwhile, was pretty decent. A birdie putt of some 50-feet on the first got him on the right road and he bolstered his assault with an eagle on the sixth, where he clattered a 2-iron into a couple of feet, as he carded a 63.
Hatton, who will defend his Dunhill Links title at St Andrews, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie next week, made his surge on the top during a purposeful inward half of 30 which included five birdies on his last seven holes.
England’s Chris Hanson, Rikard Karlberg of Sweden and the Finnish duo of Mikko Ilonen and Mikko Korhonen sit alongside Quiros a shot off the lead while the defending champion, Matthew Fitzpatrick, and the tournament host, Lee Westwood, finished with 66s.
They were joined on that mark by the former US Open champion Graeme McDowell, who was left cursing a damaging four-putt double-bogey on the last green.
Richie Ramsay recovered from a double-bogey seven on his fourth hole to post a battling 67 as he finished as the best of the Scots.
Scott Jamieson opened with a 68 but Russell Knox could only muster a 74 to share joint second-last place.
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