West Australian Hayden Hopewell has placed himself firmly in the mix at The R&A's The Amateur Championship with a four-under opening round of 68 at St Anne's Old Links to be in a tie for fourth.

Hopewell, who went undefeated at the Australian Interstate Teams Matches last month and twice finished runner-up at PGA Tour of Australasia events (TPS Murray River and the WA Open) last season, carded six birdies to sit three shots behind leader Ludvig Aberg of Sweden despite battling the flu.

"I'm very happy with that," he said. "Considering I've been pretty sick the last three or four days. I was in bed two days ago. So just to get out on the course and make some good swings out there, and to get a good round to go, even though the course is firming up pretty nicely, a little bit of wind out there but I'm very happy with the 4-under.

"I started off hot. I started birdie, par, birdie, which was nice just to get like a good momentum out there going. I hit a lot of good iron shots into greens and probably the shot that sticks in my mind the most is the putt into 12. It was about 35, 40 feet and went straight in the centre."

The 20-year-old will move to Royal Latham & St Annes for the second round as he experiences England, and links golf, for the first time as part of a strong group of Australia's best male amateur golfers touring the United Kingdom.

"There's not too many events where there's 12 Aussie guys travelling with you. It's good to just chat, relax, have fun and just play some golf," he said.

The next best performing Australians were Harry Bolton, Max Charles, Connor McKinney, Blaike Perkins and Joshua Greer who all shot two-over in the first round to share 90th place.

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