Japan's Kuramoto one ahead in Senior PGA Championship

(Reuters) - Japanese Massy Kuramoto was the only player to dip below par in difficult scoring conditions as he carded a one-under 71 for a one-shot lead in Thursday's opening round of the Senior PGA Championship in French Lick, Indiana. The 59-year-old, who won 30 tournaments on the Japan Golf Tour, birdied two of his first three holes before going into damage limitation mode on a cold, wet and windy day at French Lick Resort. Defending champion Colin Montgomerie of Scotland offset a bogey at the eighth with a birdie at the 12th before ending a gruelling day a stroke off the pace in the second of the season's five major championships for senior golfers. "This is one difficult golf course and I am thrilled to get out of here at level par," Montgomerie, 51, told Golf Channel after carding an even 72. "It was very, very cold this morning and I lost my circulation about the eighth hole. "I couldn't feel the putter head properly through the hands ... awful conditions on a very difficult golf course, a golf course where you've got to drive the ball properly. "The pins are in major positions for a Thursday. These are Sunday placings here, so it's very difficult to score, to get the ball close. And if you do get it close, to hole out." Montgomerie, who won last year's Senior PGA Championship by four strokes in Michigan, finished the opening round level with Americans Billy Andrade and Bart Bryant, Englishman Barry Lane and France's Jean-Francois Remesy. Germany's Bernhard Langer, South African David Frost and American Tom Lehman, who won the 1996 British Open, were among a group of 14 players who carded 73s. (Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by Greg Stutchbury)