Luiten rises from 41st finish at Kenya Open to lead field at Savannah's first round

He is joined at the helm by Frenchman Clement Sordet who dropped a shot at the par five 11th to deny him a chance to go clear of the leading pack of four. 

Also in the lead is 2006 U.S Open Championship winner Alejandro Canizares and Kenya Open defending champion Justin Harding who carded 21 under par 263 to win at Karen on Sunday.

"Seven under is a really good score around here. No bogeys on the card is always a good thing and seven birdies. I had a couple more chances but I’m very happy with seven under and it’s a good position for the rest of the week. It was good to come out with a good start, starting with three birdies, that really gets your round going and I just kept plotting away from there," he said,

"You don’t see this type of course any more, they’re all long, big wide with bunkers everywhere. But here you’ve got to think your way around, you’ve got to avoid the trees. As long as you do that you have a shot. Every hole you can play in three or four different ways, and you don’t really see that very often, so it’s a very clever design,"

"I got an invite to play here 15 years ago on the Challenge Tour, from Daan Slooter who had a Challenge Tour event in the Netherlands so he had some invites and he gave me one. It was my first year as a pro and I finished tenth that week. That’s all that I can remember, I made a birdie down the last to finish tenth and that got me into the next tournament,"

"I finished third in the next one and that got me into the next tournament and I won that one! For me, it was a perfect start to my Challenge Tour career. I got my chance with a wildcard invite and I took it. I have really good memories of this place. It was pretty similar out there, I don’t know if the course has really changed. It’s still almost a little bit softer because they had a bit of rain overnight. A little bit of wind like you’d expect, as we had every day last week. So you know the course and you know what to do,"

"I’m really looking forward to the rest of the week. Hopefully, I can just hit the ball as I did today and stay out of trouble and make sure to hole some putts and that’s always a good thing if you do that in golf," said Luiten. 

As for the former U.S Open champion, Canizares, believes it is a mental game and one has to have a lot of preparation behind every shot. 

"It was lovely. It’s been a long time since I put a score on the board. It started out really nicely, I played solid on the front nine then a couple of bogeys on the back nine but managed to make a long putt for eagle on six. Then an unforced error on seven and I bogeyed that hole but finished with a nice birdie on the last. I’m really happy that the swing felt good, I was putting nicely and it was a good round to start,"

"On nine, it was straight downwind, a little off the right. With the driver, you might catch the ground very firmly and if you don’t hit the green you might go into the out of bounds. I hit three wood and tried to run it up the gap, it’s a narrow gap because you have trees on the left and right. I got a good lie on the left, missed a bit, but had a good lie. Hit a nice chip and had a three-footer for birdie,"

"I was confident that my swing was in the right spot, it’s been a while since I felt that. It’s been a long time since the last tournament, my first tournament was Qatar and I was a little rusty. Last week I didn’t hit the ball that bad, I just made bad mistakes when I shouldn’t have. I had four double bogeys and missed the cut easily. It’s a great week, I’m playing good and feel confident with the way I’m hitting it and the way I’m putting,"

"We know the golf course pretty well, we’ve been here for two weeks. We know the spots and the clubs you’ve got to hit to keep it on the fairway, which is important because the rough is difficult to control the ball out of. You get fliers. It’s important to take advantage of the par fives," the Spanish golfer expressed.