Par Leaves Canada T13th After Opening Round

With competition contested over two courses---the 7,215-yard, par 73 Royal Adelaide Golf Club and the par 72, 6,930-yard Grange Golf Club---the United States tops the leaderboard at 10-under par with a team total of 136 while Scotland, also at 136, is 8-under.

Puerto Rico is alone in third place at 7-under 137, followed by France and Wales, who also started the tournament playing the par 72 Grange Golf Club, and are at 5-under 139.

Playing on the longer Royal Adelaide course, Abbotsford, British Columbia's Nick Taylor posted three birdies to go with three bogeys for a par 73, a score equaled by Calgary's Jordan Irwin, who suffered the ignominious fate of a triple bogey eight on the par five 9th hole. Despite recording five birdies in his round, Irwin had two additional bogeys on the back nine. David Markle of Shelburne, Ontario, with a pair of bogeys on his outgoing nine, closed the day with bogeys on his final three holes for a five-over par 78.

Although the tournament does not recognize an individual champion, Puerto Rico's Mauricio Muniz was tops among all players with a 10 birdie performance for 8-under par 64, one stroke shy of the tournament record. Two Americans, Richie Fowler and Jamie Lovemark, posted scores of 5-under par 68 and share second place with Scotland's Callum Macaulay who is at 5-under 67.

Accompanying the team in Australia is non-playing captain Doug Roxburgh of Vancouver, the RCGA's Director of High Performance, and Henry Brunton, head coach of the National Men's Amateur Team.

Conducted by the International Golf Federation, which is comprised of the national governing bodies of golf in more than 110 countries, the biennial World Amateur Golf Team Championships is contested over four rounds of stroke play with the top two scores from each team counting towards the team total.

The competition is rotated among three geographic zones of the world: Asia-Pacific, North American and European-African. In 1992 Canada hosted the competition at Vancouver's Marine Drive and West Vancouver's Capilano Golf Clubs. In 2010, the event will be held in Argentina and the 2012 event will be held in Turkey.

Last week in Adelaide Canada's women's squad, of Kira Meixner of Richmond, B.C., Maude-Aimée LeBlanc of Windsor, Que., and Stephanie Sherlock of Barrie, Ont., finished fourth in the Women's World Amateur Team Golf Championship with a combined team score of 583.