As season starts go, drilling seven birdies in a round ain't bad. Now, how about seven birdies in a row?

Ryuji Imada did just that at Thursday's opening round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship in Hawaii, knocking down seven birdies starting at the sixth hole. According to PGATour.com, his shots came from seven feet, nine inches, and then 14, eight, three, three, and 20 feet. It's one off the record of consecutive birdies held by six other golfers, most recently Jerry Kelly in 2003 at the Las Vegas Invitational.

After the first round, Imada sits two strokes back of Geoff Ogilvy, who played a lovely bogey-free round at Kapalua. Also looking good were Ernie Els, who's absolutely giddy to be back in Hawaii and playing like it, and somebody named Johnson Wagner. (Just kidding, Johnson.) Familiar names like Kenny Perry, Boo Weekley and Anthony Kim are also lurking. Vijay Singh recovered from a godawful beginning to post an even-par round, and Camilo Villegas posted a similar worse-than-the-score-would-indicate kind of round, wrapping at 1 over. And last year's champion, Daniel Chopra, has so far pulled off the dubious first-to-worst transition after an ugly +6 round.