Olympic golf 2016 leaderboard: Henrik Stenson keeps pace with his putter in Rio

Henrik Stenson, off to a sizzling start under rainy skies in Rio, suffered the traditional PBFU that every hacker can relate to when he rinsed his shot off the third tee after going birdie-birdie to start Friday’s second Olympics round.

Except the reigning British Open champion is not your garden-variety weekend warrior. So he followed up his water ball by draining a 100-footer for a ho-hum par — all while playing partners Thongchai Jaidee and Rafa Cabrera Bello were conferring with officials about how to handle the situation with their golf balls side-by-side in a green-side bunker.

That was after he hit the water with a 3-wood, found the putting surface with the same club and then casually rolled in for an extremely improbable par.

“The third hole is probably going to be the greatest par-4 of the week,” Golf Channel’s Nick Faldo said in what will likely stand as the greatest understatement of the event.

Stenson, the oddsmakers’ favorite to follow up his Royal Troon win with a gold medal in Brazil, appeared unstoppable in his opening 2-under nine holes. He made up for the one blip on his card — a bogey on the par-3 4th — with his third birdie of the day on the par-3 eighth, a putt he, naturally, walked into the hole.

But it was his opening three holes that had the world No. 5 emulating Rio’s renowned Christ the Redeemer statue and Faldo completing the analogy.

In other action, Aussie Marcus Fraser was not going to let the Swede stroll into the lead. Two birdies in his first five holes increased the overnight frontrunner’s 10-under edge to three shots over Stenson and Thomas Pieters.