Sandra Gal carded a 69 to take the first-round lead at the RICOH Women's British Open.  Angela Stanford and Song-Hee Kim are tied for second one shot back, Yuko Mitsuka and Hee Young Park are tied for fourth after rounds of 71 while Maria Hjorth is alone in sixth at even par.

You read that right - only five players finished the day under par.  Winds up to 30mph and a toughened-up course (relative to 2006, per the pre-tournament interviews) combined to drive the day's average score to 78.26, nearly three strokes above the 2006 Royal Lytham average.  57 of the 144 players (an astounding 39.6%) shot 80 or worse.  Individual details on the carnage follow the jump.

One prominent LET player even exceeded 90 today (three triple-bogeys will send you down that path).  Despite this and numerous other poor past performances against top quality competition, some unenlightened folks might tell you in blog comments that she's a proven winner unlike that slouch from Hawaii who doesn't belong anywhere near a Solheim team.  The players who shot 74 are tied for 11^th place, for gosh sakes.  Unless conditions improve or the course is simplified in some way, the winner could be several shots over par.

Gal reached -3 when she birdied 10 and 11.  After a bogey at 12, she got the stroke back at 15.  After another bogey at 16, Sandra got the stroke back again with a birdie at 17.  Stanford was -3 until she bogeyed 15 and 17.  A birdie at 18 returned Angela to -2.  Kim was -4 through 13 (she was the only player to reach -4 all day) but she bogeyed three of her next four.  Song-Hee matched Stanford's birdie at the last to match her 70.  Mitsuka was +2 through 5, played the next four in birdie-eagle-par-birdie and shot 38 (+1) on the back.  Park's three-birdie two-bogey day was ho-hum compared to most scorecards.

For the second week in a row, The Constructivist is delivering primo live-blogging over at Mostly Harmless (those early morning events during the summer months fit really well into his schedule!) so be sure to check out his account of the day's progression.