South African duo Ernie Els and Erik van Rooyen made some solid headway early in the first round of the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head Island on Thursday.
The two were part of the early groups that started the action for the weekend in the second PGA Tour event since its resumption at the Charles Schwab Challenge last week.
READ: Super 7: Oosthuizen leads Saffas at RBC Heritage
Els concluded his opening round with a decent four-under-par 67, which included five birdies and an unfortunate bogey on the penultimate hole.
Van Rooyen also hit the ground running with his putter doing the talking on the front nine, which yielded as many as five birdies.
The 30-year-old remained even throughout the back nine to come home with a 66, two shots off the early leader.
Ian Poulter occupied the early summit of the leaderboard in South Carolina with a splendid opening-round 64 to finish on seven under par, although a whole host of players have made excellent starts and are in contention to go low on Thursday.
Charl Schwartzel, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Dylan Frittelli and Louis Oosthuizen are also out on the course, while Branden Grace is set to tee off at 8:22pm on Thursday evening with the hope of building on his good performance at Colonial last week.
