Call last week's $5.5 million Mercedes-Benz Championship an exclusive golf warmup for this week's $5.2 million Sony Open in Hawai'i.

Luke Donald blasted off to an opening-round 7-under-par 63 yesterday to seize the lead at Waialae Country Club. His closest pursuers were also among the 2006 winners who opened the season last week at Kapalua, with K.J. Choi a shot back and Will MacKenzie and Jim Furyk sharing third at 65.

Donald finished seventh at Kapalua, while MacKenzie tied for fourth and Choi eighth. Furyk, who won at Kapalua in 2001 and here in 1996, was 18th last week. That puts him $80,000 up on most of the players in this first full-field event of the PGA Tour season.

Donald was eight better than any of the Hawai'i golfers yesterday as Waialae was hardly paradise for the home pros.

Tadd Fujikawa, the 16-year-old Moanalua Menehune, won the kama'aina award yesterday. Sony's lone amateur fired a 71 to beat the six Hawai'i pros here, including Punahou senior Michelle Wie, who stumbled to a 78.

Both teens hooked their opening drives minutes apart. Both had the largest galleries, with some 500 for Wie and 150 for Fujikawa. Both salvaged par on their first hole, Wie from 8 feet and Fujikawa from 9.

There the similarities ended.

Wie would continue to be terrorized on the tee, pouring drives into the water on the third, fifth and ninth, double-bogeying the sixth from the trees and firing an 8-over 43 on the front. Two long birdie putts helped her play the back in even-par and come in a shot lower than last year's first round.

She closed with a 68 back then and missed the cut by four. Her best showing at Sony will probably remain her first, at age 14, when she missed the cut by one after playing the opening rounds even par (68-72).

Wie hit just one fairway yesterday. She drained three 8-footers on the front to salvage a pair of pars and a bogey.

"My lowest point was the sixth, two doubles in a row," Wie said. "I just had a lot of things going on. But, you know, I just thought I'm not going to let this get away because I still have it in me. ... I totally forgot about the front nine because that wasn't even worth thinking about. I mean, it was pretty bad."

In stark contrast, Fujikawa sailed through with only a bogey-bogey hiccup at 15 and 16 to keep the youngest ever to play at the U.S. Open from breaking par. His lone birdie came when he blasted his approach to 40 inches on the fourth.

Fujikawa's elders could not follow his precocious lead.

Parker McLachlin, the 1996 state high school champion out of Punahou, shot 72 in his first round as a PGA Tour member. So did Castle graduate Dean Wilson, whose one birdie could not erase a triple bogey on the fifth. Aloha Section PGA Player of the Year Kevin Hayashi had a 74 and section qualifiers David Chin (76) and Abe Mariano (83) sandwiched Wie's score.

And then there was Donald, who went out early and torched Waialae under overcast skies. He had nine birdies — all but one from within 11 feet.

"Obviously it was a good day for me and it didn't feel that hard," he insisted. "It didn't feel that hard to shoot 7-under, but it's easy to say that when everything is going well."

Donald, from England, was seventh on last year's European Tour Order of Merit, ninth on the PGA Tour money list and is 10th in the World Golf Ranking — one of four in the top 10 that are here. His history at Waialae is also impressive, with top-20 finishes in four previous starts.

Many made runs at him during the day. No one could catch him.

Choi shared the first-round lead last week and eagled his ninth hole (par-5 18th) from 44 feet yesterday to make the turn at 5-under. All he could add on the front was one birdie.

MacKenzie was putting for a share of the lead on his final green. He missed that one and the next to fall below Choi. He was "pretty bummed" about that, and last weekend, when he was 7-under after the first two rounds and finished 8-under.

"I did this on the mini-tours," admitted MacKenzie, who quit golf at 14 then rekindled his passion for the game through tours leading up to the PGA. "I used to get in contention and I don't know what happened. I just sort of lost composure and sped up and started thinking."

Furyk, No. 2 in the World Golf Ranking, hit his approach shots within 10 feet at Nos. 8, 9 and 10 to jump-start his charge. The 1996 Hawaiian Open champion converted all three birdie opportunities and two more later to climb into contention, again. He has finished in the top 25 eight times since 1995.

David Toms and Chad Campbell, who finished 1-2 here last year, were 4-under at the turn. Campbell closed with a 66, but Toms played the front nine in 39 — hitting in the water at No. 2 — and finished even.

Mercedes-Benz champion Vijay Singh shot 71. It was only the second time he has been over par in the his last 22 Sony rounds.