Paul McGinley was best of the Irish with an impressive 69 to leave him two under. Graeme McDowell is eight over after 16 while Darren Clarke is level par after three holes.

Meanwhile Englishman Gary Evans continued his love affair with the Championship by carding a first round 68.

Evans, who missed out on a play-off at Muirfield by a shot in 2002 after losing a ball on the 17th hole in the final round, holed his second shot to the 560-yard par five fourth for an albatross as he set the early clubhouse target.

It looked like being surpassed when Ernie Els continued the stunning start to the championships with a hole-in-one on the eighth hole as he reached four under with two to play.

But the pre-tournament favourite then took two to escape from a bunker on the 17th to run up a double bogey and had to settle for a 69, one behind Evans, Korea’s KJ Choi and Sweden’s Carl Pettersson.

In the first match out at 6.30am, Evans holed out with a 5-iron from 226 yards for the first albatross since Greg Owen’s on the 11th in the third round at Lytham in 2001, while Els only needed a wedge on the 123-yard eighth, the shortest hole on the British Open rota.

“I hit it perfectly to the middle of the green, turned round to put the club in the bag and next thing I knew there were arms up in the air and everyone was going crazy,” said Evans, who also finished 10th at Sandwich last year.

“I’ve got a lot of confidence now because of my experience in the Open and if I keep doing what I’m doing and not get ahead of myself then there is no reason why I can’t compete at the end of the week.”

Els said: “Everything went pretty smoothly until I made five at the 17th but I suppose before I started out I would have taken 69, although I few I left one or two shots out there.”

As for the hole-in-one, he added: “I thought I hadn’t hit it hard enough but it had a lot of spin. It was a good shot and a wonderful, wonderful result.”

Colin Montgomerie was two under par with three holes to play on his home course, two shots off the lead shared by Paul Casey and Kenneth Ferrie, and in-form Frenchman Thomas Levet.

There was still danger to be avoided however, 61-year-old Tom Weiskopf, winner here in 1973, taking four shots to escape from a greenside bunker to run up a quadruple bogey eight on the first on his way to an 80.

And former champion David Duval was already on his way home, the 2001 winner pulling out before the start of his round citing a sprained back muscle. His place was taken by fifth reserve David Griffiths from Hertfordshire.

Els had got off to a quiet start with just one birdie in seven holes, the South African two-putting the fourth for a birdie but missing from four feet on the 601-yard sixth.

That was soon forgotten however when the 34-year-old, who would overtake Tiger Woods as world number one if he won a second British Open title and the American finished lower than 17th, saw his tee-shot on the eighth spin back into the hole, matching 71-year-old Gene Sarazen’s feat in the 1973 British Open here.

Montgomerie holed from 18ft on the second, half that distance on the fifth and from just three feet on the sixth for his three birdies, and would have shared the lead but for missing from 10ft on the eighth.

The Scot’s progress came to a grinding halt when he ran up a double bogey six on the 10th, hitting two poor chips after his approach had finished in a deep swale to the right of the green.

And he did well to avoid another double bogey on the next hole as well, getting up and down from short of the green after taking a penalty drop when he sliced his drive to the edge of the gorse before picking up birdies on the 12th and 15th.

Casey went to the turn in 34 and carded birdies at the 10th, 11th and 15th while Ferrie was four under after just eight holes.

Levet, who covered the back nine in 29 on Sunday to win the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond, was four under with four to play.