An early alarm and dreary weather couldn’t keep the fans away or the birdies off Sergio Garcia’s scorecard in the opening round of the Australian PGA Championship.

Teeing off at 6.10am was a first for Garcia and he was pleased to see plenty of fans there to greet him, Adam Scott and Wade Ormsby as they teed off the 10th.

“I’ve never teed off at 6:10 in a tournament. I think probably the earliest I’ve teed off is 6:50, maybe 7:00. So that was interesting,” said Garcia.

“I think it was probably I want to say it was the closest I’ve had a dinner and a breakfast ever. Yeah, I woke up at 4:00am this morning, had a bit of breakfast and then I got to the putting green probably just after 5:00am.

“I got to the 10th and I was impressed how many people were there at 6:10am in the morning. I was expecting people to kind of come throughout.

“I thought there were going to be like 10 or 12 people at the first on the 10th tee and there were probably I would say at least 200 or 300 people there already at 6:10am, so that was really, really nice to see.”

Competing on the RACV Royal Pines Resort for the first time, Garcia made his first birdie on the 11th hole before adding a further four to his card.

Garcia was pleased to fire a bogey free 5-under 67 despite feeling like his best golf had eluded him today.

“I played pretty solid. I wouldn’t say that it was amazing but it was good,” added Garcia.

“The most positive thing for me would be to go a bogey free round, which I didn’t realise until we got done.”

It was a challenging day with the rain but the course held up well according to the World Number 11.

“Other than when it started pouring and obviously they were filled with water, the greens held up great. As soon as it stopped raining, they drained very, very nicely,” said Garcia.

“The fairways did quite well but they were a little bit wetter. We did have two or three mud balls here and there obviously after the big rains.

“The bunkers, you didn’t see any potholes in the bunkers so that was nice to see. You know, so the course did as well as you can expect under the conditions.”

While the weather was damp the mood of the marquee group wasn’t with Garcia playing alongside fellow Masters winner Adam Scott and recent European Tour winner Wade Ormsby who both had 1-under in the opening round.

“It was nice to play with Scotty and with Wade, we had a great time. Other than a couple of times where it poured down on us, it was a fun day.”

The afternoon field is now on course.