Team Australia has got off to a flying start at the ISPS HANDA Melbourne World Cup of Golf and will take a share of the lead into the second round.

Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith combined well in the first round to fire 10-under 62 in the fourball format to be tied on the leaderboard alongside Team England represented by Ian Poulter and Tyrrell Hatton and Team Korea made up of Byeong Hun An and Si Woo Kim.

“I think it was very important for us to get off to a good start.  You don’t want to be fighting back the whole tournament,” said Leishman who contributed four birdies to the team card while Smith made an eagle and four birdies.

“Cam had his putter going today, which was great, and we combined pretty well.  So that’s what you have to do in that format.”

With Smith adding, “I think we just combined really well.  Like Leish was saying, once one of us was in a bit of trouble, the other one just hit the centre of the green, gave ourselves 20, 30 feet and an opportunity at birdie.”

Sitting a shot behind the leading trio on 9-under the card are Team Malaysia, Gavin Green and Ben Leong, and the defending champion Team Denmark, Thorbjorn Olesen and Soren Kjeldsen.

At 7-under the card, Team New Zealand had a solid day on course with Mark Brown proving a worthy teammate selection by Ryan Fox.

“I think I made one birdie today, so it’s pretty much all on Brownie.  I might have made a couple of sneaky par saves there, but Brownie played some great golf today and it was good to see.  He kind of needed to because my golf was terrible for the most part,” said Fox, who selected Brown as his partner after Danny Lee withdrew from the tournament.

“I don’t think he (Brown) needs too much justification, he’s played at this level for a long time.  He won at the highest level on the European Tour, on the Asian Tour and on the Aussie Tour.  So obviously when Danny pulled out and Mike (Hendry) couldn’t make it, it was a pretty easy decision for me to pick Brownie.  If he felt like he needed to justify his pick, he certainly did that today.”

Mark Brown was happy to have the first round behind them, “I was feeling a little bit of pressure coming into this to try and justify Ryan picking me,” said Brown.

“We’re only one round down, so it’s going to be a long week.  I think we’ll be right for the rest of the week, for sure.”

The second round will be played in a foursome format with Team Australia playing alongside Team Malaysia and teeing off at 12.35pm while Team New Zealand will be on course with Team Venezula at 11.55am.