Paul Broadhurst set a stiff target for the rest of the field with a six-under-par 66 on the opening day of the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth today.

The 41-year-old former Ryder Cup player, without a top-10 finish all season, was in the sixth group out and made the most of the ideal early conditions when registering five birdies in the first eight holes.

Broadhurst, who narrowly missed out on a return to the European side after a 15-year gap last year, did bogey the ninth, but further birdies came on the 11th and long 17th.

He was one shot ahead of playing partner and fellow Englishman Simon Khan, runner-up to David Howell in the event last May, but perhaps still best known as the player fined a record £8,000 for slow play in Ireland two years ago.

Only two behind - and still with the par-five 18th to come- is world number five Ernie Els, the man who has toughened up the West Course in the last two years and who lives alongside it.

Els actually started with a bogey after pulling his drive into the rough and he also double-bogeyed the 449-yard ninth, but his front nine also contained birdies at the second, fourth and fifth and then had five more birdies on the inward half.

The South African - six times a winner of the World Match Play on the lay-out, but never of the European Tour's flagship event - had the chance to finish with four successive birdies in a row.

At four under after 17 he is alongside Italian Francesco Molinari.

Darren Clarke, meanwhile, did what his Liverpool side failed to do by converting an early chance, but with two to play has fallen back to one over.

Clarke was returning to action after pulling out of two events in America and then withdrawing from last week's Irish Open because of a hamstring strain.

Prior to that he missed four halfway cuts in a row and with his world ranking slumping to 87th he needs a top-two finish on Sunday to avoid having to qualify for next month's US Open.

Clarke suffered his hamstring string playing football with his sons Tyrone and Conor and on Sunday they witnessed him flipping over an off-road buggy in a field near their home.

He escaped from that with only a swollen hand which went down in time for him to tee off in the £3 million event.

Padraig Harrington, Colin Montgomerie, Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen are among the afternoon starters.