Lower Scoring Memorial Tournament First Round Results In Crowded Leaderboard

Dublin, Ohio– A quartet of players lead the way at 5-under par following Thursday’s first round of play at the 50th anniversary of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday.

Wyndham Clark found some success heading to the back nine recording birdies on each of the first three holes on his second side. He also was able to record eagle on the 15th hole.

The 2023 U.S. Open champion leads the field with 4.482 Strokes Gained: Approach the Green.

“The golf course is so demanding,” Clark stated. “I think I made three saves by chipping out and having a hundred yards in. Yeah, that’s what happens at this golf course. You hit it in the rough and you really can’t advance it, so you got to be patient and take your medicine and hope you get up-and-down from a hundred yards, and I did that a couple times. Then you start hitting some good shots and you make some putts and it turns into a good round.”

“Everyone says it’s kind of wide off the tee. It is and it isn’t. Some holes are and then some aren’t. For me, I feel really comfortable if I’m in the fairway with my iron play, and so for me if I can hit fairways, I think I’ll have success here. That’s kind of the biggest thing for me. Today, every time I was in the fairway I gave myself a really good chance to make birdie and the times I didn’t hit the fairway I was trying to scramble for par.”

Tommy Fleetwood also broke 70 for the second time in 13 career rounds on Muirfield Village Golf Club. Fleetwood went out in 32 and ended up with the lone bogey-free round of the 72 players in the field.

Fleetwood ranked atop the board with 3.113 Strokes Gained: Around the Green and his 2.430 Strokes Gained: Putting placed him fourth.

“I got the most out of the round, totally,” remarked Fleetwood. “I got away with a couple of poor misses, hit the pin a couple of times when it was going past. In general, I played okay, I played fine. I just wasn’t a hundred percent by any means with my ball control from the fairway with my irons, but still shot 5-under, so it couldn’t have been that bad. I was just getting a little frustrated at the end not being able to execute the iron shots that I wanted to.”

“I think it’s always good to have a test like this. I think embrace the challenge for what it is. And, yeah, it’s like the ultimate test of your game. I think you have to look forward to those and go in with a good mindset and enjoy it as much as you can, for sure.”

Ryan Gerard’s story is an inverse to Fleetwood’s day as his back-nine 31, included birdies on holes 12-16.

Gerard won last year’s Barracuda Championship and owns a runner up finish in the Sony Open as tied for second at The American Express.

Following Thursday’s play he led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting at 3.671 and was second in Proximity at 24’6″, this despite admitting after the round that he aimed at no flagsticks during his second nine.

“I think I started kind of hitting a lot more fairways and was able to attack in the right spots and kind of play conservative in the other more difficult ones,” Gerard revealed. “I felt like I did a really good job of just staying patient throughout the round. I made a couple of bad swings on the front nine and made like kind of one weird decision where I thought the wind was going one way and it was just going the opposite way, and those will kind of get you out here, especially the small misses often lead to big punishments at this golf course.”

The last of the four is a familiar name to Pittsburgh golf fans as last year’s U.S. Open champion has continued his form in recent events.

Spaun overcame consecutive back-nine bogeys to two birdies on consecutive holes and emphatically ended his round, striking his approach on the 18th hole to 11 inches.

After play concluded, he revealed that a difference maker was what he did between the ears. When he gave those two shots back, he hung in there and was pleased with his putting along the way.

“When you make the turn at 4-under like I did, you’re like, ‘okay, like, I can really go low,'” observed Spaun. “Then all of a sudden you bogey a par-5 on 11, and then you compound errors on the next hole and make a bogey and you’re 2-under and you’re just like, well, this can kind of go one way or the other. Knowing that it’s a tough course, people are going to go through that, and you just have to take it and try to fight through it and rebound.”

Spaun admitted his win at the Valero Texas Open came out of nowhere he was not playing well but gave himself a chance that Sunday and took it. Since, he has changed putters, and it has aligned with the rest of his game.

In two weeks’, time, Spaun will be defending a title for the second occasion in his PGA Tour career and in that time, he has to make adjustments since he was thrown into the spotlight, a different territory than what he has been accustomed to.

“It’s been fun, but also a challenge at the same time trying to balance, what’s it like to be considered an elite golfer now,” he summarized. “A little bit of a disorienting kind of situation for me. I’ve always kind of been the underdog, one that’s been able to hide in the shadows and background and stuff, but now at the start of the year it was, like, ‘this guy’s got to show up, he’s a top 10 player in the world. Like, this guy’s got to be playing well.’ So, I put too much pressure on myself to start the year based off of what I did last year. (It was) try(ing) to let it go and remember that I can play really well if I just get out of my own way. Kind of relaxing and trying not to control the outcome too much has really helped me settle down kind of the start of the spring here.”

A stroke behind is Nick Taylor, who last year at this tournament placed fourth. He needed 24 putts to get through his round, ranked second with 5.206 Strokes Gained: Tee To Green and 3.819 Strokes Gained: Approach the Green.

He took the last two weeks off following the PGA Championship and despite the natural unknown of what would await him when he returned, fired off seven birdies.

Were Taylor to emerge victorious, he would be the first Canadian to do so.

“I think my iron game’s been a strong part of my game for a while now, and that definitely is a premium out here,” offered Taylor. “Hitting the fairways here is important with how high the rough is, but once you’re coming into the greens, you just got to be precise with how far you’re hitting it. There’s a lot of slopes you can use, but if you’re a little bit off you can get penalized quite severely, so everything needs to be on. It’s nice having good mojo coming off last year coming into this year.

Two-time defending champion Scottie Scheffler concluded play at +1. Given Muirfield Village’s reputation as a second-shot golf course, Scheffler ranked 67th in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green. His tee shot on the par-3 16th hole found the water and led to clear exasperation.

The low winds the morning wave experienced did not hold true for Scheffler and on the 16th hole he told his caddie Ted Scott, “I don’t think you know how frustrating that is,” before repeatedly saying that he did not know what to do.

“That’s just another really good iron shot, and the wind switched from down off the right to pretty significantly in off the right,” he analyzed. “If it’s down off the right, that ball’s probably where I hit my wedge shot to. So just don’t really know what I’m supposed to do there outside of trying to hit a good shot, and then it’s frustrating when it doesn’t work out, especially when it doesn’t work out in that direction. I would rather get gusted in off the left, not in off the right there. All you can do is just try to hit good shots. It can be very frustrating sometimes when you feel like you’re hitting good shots and then you’re going to the drop zone.”

Opening rounds have not been the kindest to Scheffler this season, but that is not what he attributed Thursday’s result to.

“Is it really that slow of a start,” asked Scheffler. “How low are the scores this afternoon? You know what I mean? All I can do is compete with kind of the hand I’ve been given, and teeing off last on this golf course is challenging. A day like today, I’m not sure from where our tee times were if there was going to be very many low rounds out there, so I might be two or three shots away from the low round where if we’re all sitting in that situation, it’s hard to predict what it would be if that was the case.”

MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND LEADERBOARD

NOTEBOOK

Ryan Fox stood on the fifth tee at +2 having missed a trio of putts inside five feet and he was trying to stay patient, despite knowing multiple chances had gone away.

Ironically enough he had a similar attempt on the fifth hole, but this time the ball did roll in for birdie to settle things with his putter. Despite this and some disappointment off the tee, he is tied for eighth place at -2.

Fox would call Muirfield Village’s conditions optimal as it was warm, with not a lot of wind and perfect greens.

“It feels like you’ve got to take advantage of today, because the rest of the week the breeze is going to get up and the course is going to get firmer and faster and scarier than it already is,” he told PGN.

Fox won twice on the PGA Tour last season and in so doing has been able to compete in signature events.

These experiences gave him a big takeaway, that his good golf is enough to compete with the best.

“You always want to believe that, but when you’re playing against the top guys week in and week out, in the signature events, you can put some scores together and I had a couple of wins last year as well,” said Fox. “It’s a different thing actually doing it and beating these guys and competing against these guys, so it was nice to play these events last year and feel like I was competitive. I am good enough to compete out here.”

Though the tee announcer did not acknowledge Jason Day’s local ties, he always draws a crowd when he tees it up at the Memorial Tournament.

Unfortunately for Day he shot +2 including a triple bogey on the sixth hole which included landing his ball in the water on his third shot.

“I’m just not quite happy with the swing right now,” he summarized. “I think I did a good job of hanging in there. Made an awful error on 6, I got a little bit of a bad break with the tee ball, even though I shouldn’t have been over there. Then I did the smart thing, chip out into a sand divot and then kind of hit it fat into the water. So, it’s just hard because you’re standing there in the sand divot and you’re like, ‘okay, if I just catch this clean and it goes too far, you might chip is back into the water coming back down in that rough.’ So, you’re trying to do the best job of catching it clean and I just caught it heavy.”

Day went further stating his year has been a tough one and a lot of the stress and pressure stems from being unable to get the ball on the green. He feels like he is playing to miss a shot instead of playing to a target because he does not know what the ball will do once it comes off the club face, something he is taking accountability for.

“It’s nothing to do with the clubs,” continued Day. “It’s all kind of me in a sense that when you’re fighting something, it’s really hard to trust it. Luke (Reardon), my caddie, is telling me, ‘Put a good story on it,’ which means that, like, you’re trying to tell yourself a good story to get yourself into the shot and visualize. And when you’re hitting it this way, it’s really hard to kind of see that story and tell yourself and really trust and believe in it.”

“I think at some point I’ll get beyond it. It’s really hard to be patient right now because every tournament I typically have three decent rounds and one bad round that just puts me out of the tournament. I’m in the 30 to 60 finish position-wise.”

Photo credit: Julia Wingard