"We dovetailed nicely, when one was out of position, the other one was in position and that's exactly what you have to do." Leishman said he and Smith, who will play in the next-to-last group Friday with Malaysia, need to avoid any early mistakes "If you get off to an average start in foursomes, things can start going the wrong way pretty quickly," Leishman said.

An said he and Kim combined well to keep South Korea atop the leaderboard.

"I think we saved each other pretty good," An said. "When he was struggling, I made some birdies, and when I was out (of the hole) he made some good par saves."

Three teams were tied for fourth, one stroke behind — Belgium (Thomas Pieters and Thomas Detry), Malaysia (Gavin Green and Ben Leong) and Soren Kjeldsen and Thorbjorn Olesen, who won the title for Denmark by four strokes two years ago at nearby Kingston Heath.

India (Anirban Lahiri and Gaganjeet Bhullar) and Ireland (Shane Lowry and Paul Dunne) were tied for seventh after 64s. The US team of Kyle Stanley and Matt Kuchar was in a large group tied for 13th among 28 teams after a 66.

Officials moved up tee times for Thursday because of expected storms and showers which didn't eventuate. When the last group finished, the sun was shining and the wind had dropped off.

Rain is in the forecast for both Friday and Saturday, with a high temperature expected of only 14 Celsius (57 Fahrenheit) on Friday.

Associated Press