Round 1 Notebook: SAS Championship

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Weather: Players off both the first and 10th tees. Sunny and unseasonably hot with highs in the mid-90s and winds out of the SW at 5-15 mph in the afternoon.

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Round 1 Leaderboard: 1 -- Russ Cochran (-8/64); 2 -- Tom Pernice Jr. (-7/65); T3 -- David Eger (-6/66), Bob Gilder (-6/66); T5 -- Nick Price (-5/67), Ted Schulz (-5/67)

• After making six consecutive pars to open the day, Russ Cochran made six birdies and an eagle over his last 12 holes to shoot 8-under-par 64 and take a one-stroke lead over defending champion Tom Pernice Jr., after the first day of the 2010 SAS Championship. Cochran, a co-leader after Round 1 of last year's SAS event, won his first Champions Tour title two weeks ago in Korea at the Posco E&C Songdo Championship.

• Cochran's 64 today matches his career-low score on the Champions Tour and also equals the lowest first-round score in SAS Championship history. In 2002, Jim Thorpe shot 8-under 64 at Prestonwood in the opening round. Cochran also had a 64 in Round 3 of last year's U.S. Senior Open at Crooked Stick Golf Club near Indianapolis and in Round 2 of this year's Allianz Championship at Broken Sound Country Club in Boca Raton, Fla.

• Defending champion Pernice holed a 6-iron shot from 188 yards at the par-3 11th hole for only the third ace on the Champions Tour this year. Bob Tway made an ace at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf and Fred Funk had a hole-in-one in the final round of the 3M Championship. Pernice's ace today was also only the third ace in tournament history and first since the 2008 event. It was Pernice's second in competition. Earlier this year on the PGA TOUR at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, Pernice made an ace in the pro-am.

• Thus far in 2010, there have been only four first-round leaders/co-leaders go on to win on the Champions Tour. First-round leaders/co-leaders have won this event four times in the previous nine years at Prestonwood, including two of the last three events in Cary.

• Sonny Skinner, a two-time winner on the Nationwide Tour who also finished second in two different PGA Professional National Championships, turned 50 on August 18th and posted a 1-over-par 73 in his debut on the Champions Tour on Friday. Skinner pre-qualified for the SAS Championship by shooting 67, then backed it up with a 65 in the open qualifier on Monday to get into the tournament.

• Andy Bean's even-par 72 today snapped a string of 13 straight sub-par scores at Prestonwood. His streak of par/better scores at this course was extended to 23 straight. Bean has never finished out of the top-20 in his six previous appearances at the SAS Championship.

• Just three months shy of his 60th birthday, Bob Gilder carded a 6-under 66 today, his best opening round of the year in a stroke-play event and also his lowest round since a final-round 66 at the Montreal Championship in early July. Gilder is T3 with Charlotte's David Eger. Eger, making only his fourth start on the Champions Tour since breaking his ankle in late June, had his lowest round of the season in a stroke-play tournament. He was a winner earlier this year at the inaugural Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic.

• Cochran, Pernice and Jay Don Blake, all had bogey-free rounds today and Pernice now has a streak of 27 straight holes at Prestonwood without a bogey. There were 12 eagles made today. In addition to Pernice's ace on the par-3 11th hole, Curtis Strange made the only eagle on a par-4, holing his second shot at No. 18. Last year, there were only three eagles made in the opening round. Olin Browne had the most birdies today, eight, but shot 1-under 71.

• This and That: Dave Rummells was the only player in the field to hit all 15 fairways today off the tee...Russ Cochran had the longest measured drive, 336 yards at the par-5 12th hole...Bernhard Langer and Tom Purtzer hit 16 of 18 greens in regulation, the most in the field...David Eger had just 20 putts today, the fewest needed by a player in the field.

• Bobby Wadkins withdrew after four holes into the round with a bad back.

• There were 33 sub-par scores today compared with 45 sub-par rounds on Friday last year. Here are first round scoring averages for each year of the SAS Championship.

• Just six players have now played in all 10 SAS Championships -- Jim Dent, Bob Gilder, Tom Jenkins, Gil Morgan, Larry Nelson and Bobby Wadkins.