THERE was no doubt who England’s David Horsey thought of first after taking a share of the first-round lead in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

As Phil Mickelson began indefinite leave from golf because of his wife Amy’s breast cancer, Horsey spoke of his mother’s battle with the disease following a five-underpar 67.

‘‘She’s at home watching the live scoring and watching on the TV and hopefully it has kept her going,’’ said the 24- year-old Cheshire golfer, who jointly heads the European Tour’s flagship event with compatriot Anthony Wall and also Spaniard Gonzalo Fernandez- Castano.

‘‘She never really talks about it that way but hopefully I’ve helped in that respect.

‘‘She was diagnosed at the end of last year and and just had her last chemo(therapy) yesterday.

‘‘I do try hard not to think about it when I’m playing and what she would want for me is to keep on playing.’’ Tour rookie Horsey, a teammate of Rory McIlroy at the 2007 Walker Cup and winner of last season’s Challenge circuit, was the first of the 150- strong field to tee off at 7am.

He was one over after five holes of his debut but birdied the next two, added another on the 12th and finished with three more.

Londoner Wall, only two groups behind him, also came home in a four-under 33, while British Masters champion Fernandez-Castano went birdie-eagle on the last two.

Robert Dinwiddie leads North-East hopes, but even he is in danger of missing the cut.

The Barnard Castle pro’s 73, one over, at Wentworth leaves him six shots adrift off the leaders. But while Dinwiddie is in with a chance of playing over the weekend, the rest of the region’s golfers face an uphill struggle.

Yorkshireman Simon Dyson is tied 79th after posting a 74, while Ashington’s Kenneth Ferrie is back in 93rd after his 75.

The worst of them all, however, was Hartlepool’s Graeme Storm. He is left needing a miracle today after an horrendous eight-over par, 80, which included six bogeys and one double bogey at the 18th.

The biggest surprise of the day was the 78 of Henrik Stenson, who on his last appearance two weeks ago played arguably the best final round of the year to capture the Players Championship in Florida.

The Swede, however, was not as shocked as others might be – he has never finished higher than eighth in eight appearances at the event and he spent last week on holiday in the Bahamas.

Stenson, at fourth in the world the highest-ranked player in the field, gave a tennis analogy.

‘‘Some like hard courts, some like clay. This is not my surface,’’ he said.

‘‘I find it difficult to pick the shots and to judge how the ball will react.’’ Lee Westwood had four successive bogeys from the 12th to crash to seven over.

He was joint second to Colin Montgomerie in 2000 but missed five of the next six cuts and has not had a top 10 since. Montgomerie hit back from his closing 80 at the Irish Open with a three-under 69.

Leaderboard

67 Anthony Wall, David Horsey, Gonzalo Fdez-Castano (Spa)

68 Ross Fisher, Charl Schwartzel (Rsa), Miguel Angel Jimenez (Spa), Niclas Fasth (Swe), Barry Lane

69 Soren Kjeldsen (Den), Colin Montgomerie, Maarten Lafeber (Ned), Scott Drummond, Ben Curtis (USA), Alvaro Quiros (Spa), Robert Karlsson (Swe), Paul Casey, Anthony Kang (USA), Alexander Noren (Swe)

70 Peter Lawrie, Gary Lockerbie, Ricardo Gonzalez (Arg), Jamie Donaldson, Markus Brier (Aut), Fabrizio Zanotti (Par), Alastair Forsyth, Jean- Francois Lucquin (Fra), Thomas Levet (Fra)

71 Robert Jan Derksen (Ned), Retief Goosen (Rsa), Marcel Siem (Ger), Thongchai Jaidee (Tha), Peter Hanson (Swe), Brett Rumford (Aus), Robert Rock, Stephen Dodd, Andres Romero (Arg), Alejandro Canizares (Spa), Gregory Bourdy (Fra), Sam Little, Marcus Fraser (Aus)

72 Anton Haig (Rsa), Thomas Aiken (Rsa), Anders Hansen (Den), Scott Strange (Aus), Martin Kaymer (Ger), Shiv Shankar Prasad Chowrasia (Ind), Rory McIlroy, Marc Warren, Paul Lawrie, Richard Green (Aus), Phillip Archer

73 Mikael Lundberg (Swe), James Kingston (Rsa), Soren Hansen (Den), Robert Dinwiddie, John Bickerton, Pablo Larrazabal (Spa), John Daly (USA), Thomas Bjorn (Den), Ernie Els (Rsa), Miles Tunnicliff, Jean-Baptiste Gonnet (Fra), Hennie Otto (Rsa), Michael Lorenzo-Vera (Fra), Francois Delamontagne (Fra), Nick Dougherty, Phillip Price, Seve Benson, Paul Broadhurst, Ignacio Garrido (Spa), Paul McGinley, Jyoti Randhawa (Ind), Richard Sterne (Rsa)

80 Graeme Storm