England's Benn Barham carded a superb opening 65 in the Caltex Masters in Singapore, but had Open champion Ernie Els breathing down his neck before bad weather halted play.
European Tour rookie Barham fired nine birdies at Laguna National for a one-shot lead over former Ryder Cup player Paul Broadhurst, Essex's Simon Khan and India's Jeev Milkha Singh.
However, Els was ominously only a further shot behind after completing 15 holes of his round before a second thunderstorm of the afternoon forced play to be abandoned for the day.
Els, chasing a fourth successive tournament victory, was one of 78 players unable to complete the first round, which will resume at 8am local time on Friday morning.
The South African had just made his third birdie in a row on the 13th when the players were called off for the first time, and after just half an hour delay returned to par the 14th and hit a superb two iron approach from 250 yards on the par five 15th to set up another birdie.
The 33-year-old's drive then split the 16th fairway seconds before the siren went for the second, and final time, to signal the end of play for the day.
"We can go home happy now and come back tomorrow, it doesn't make any difference," said a relaxed Els, who won the Nedbank Challenge at the end of last year and the first two tournaments on the US Tour in Hawaii over the last fortnight.
"I'm happy with the way I came back on the back nine and I think maybe I was about to run out of birdies anyway. I still have to get used to the grain on the greens but I'm satisfied."
Ireland's Gary Murphy, who finished 15th at the Dunhill Championship in Johannesburg last week, maintained his run of form, moving to two-under after 15 holes while Dubliner Peter Lawrie is level par with three holes of his first round to complete.
Collated scores in first round in the Caltex Masters, Laguna National, Singapore
(play suspended for day due to lightning - 72 players to complete first round on Friday):
(Gbr & Irl unless stated, Irish in bold)
65 Benn Barham
66 Paul Broadhurst, Jeev Milka Singh (Ind), Simon Khan
67 David Park, Gustavo Rojas (Arg), Andrew Marshall, Wen-teh Lu (Tpe)
68 David Drysdale, Per Nyman (Swe), John Bickerton, Rick Gibson (Can), Lian-Wei Zhang (Chn), Nick Dougherty
69 David Gilford, Jason Knutzon (USA), Anders Hansen (Den), Euan Little, Fredrik Widmark (Swe)
70 Dean Robertson, Thammanoon Srirot (Tha), James Kingston (Rsa), Jyoti Randhawa (Ind), Kevin Na (Kor), Maarten Lafeber (Ned), Stephen Dodd, Julien van Hauwe (Fra)
71 Patrik Sjoland (Swe), Ahmad Dan Bateman (Can), Fran Quinn (USA), Mathias Gronberg (Swe), Marten Olander (Swe), Peter Hedblom (Swe), Adam Crawford (Aus), James Oh (Kor)
72 Francois Delamontagne (Fra), Andrew Pitts (USA), Chawalit Plaphol (Tha), Gary Birch Jnr, Ryan Reid (Rsa), Richard Green (Aus), Hendrik Buhrmann (Rsa), Santiago Luna (Spa), Raymond Russell, Jim Johnson (USA), Des Terblanche (Rsa), Danny Chia (Mal), Craig Kamps (Rsa), Miguel Angel Martin (Spa), Craig Kamps (Rsa), Ted Oh (Kor)
73 Thaworn Wiratchant (Tha), Simon Dyson, Gary Rusnak (USA), Philip Archer
74 Charlie Wik (Kor), Rafael Ponce (Ecu), Sushi Ishigaki (Jpn), Clay Devers (USA), Ter-Chang Wang (Tpe)
75 Brad Kennedy (Aus), Do-Kyu Park (Kor), Martin Maritz (Rsa), Gregory Havret (Fra), Michael Archer, Zaw Moe (Mya)
76 Nicolas Colsaerts (Bel), Kim Felton (Aus)
77 Chie-Hsiang Lin (Tpe), Harmeet Kahlon (Ind), Uhno Park (Aus), Bill Fung (Sin)
78 Richard Bland