At the end of a long, grinding season, 30 golfers trudged East Lake Golf Club Thursday for the first round of the Tour Championship, trying to summon the will to make one last climb up an Everest of money.
They were tired, a season that wrapped new signature events and an Olympics around the usual pressure-packed majors compressed the playing schedule more than ever. Is it possible to be over-golfed, to spend too much time traversing the finest resorts in the land and learning how to turn on the lights of a new luxury courtesy car every week? Apparently, yes.
“I’m in a place where I’m trying to get over this finish line,” Xander Schauffele said earlier in the week.
“It definitely is a little bit of a sprint (to the finish), and I’m sure people got little aches and pains,” world’s No. 1 Scottie Scheffler said. “But we didn’t play all year to just get tired at East Lake and kind of just throw in the towel.”
They were hot. So very hot. A melty, Hershey’s-Kiss-in-your-pants-pocket-in-August kind of hot. Ninety-six degrees was the official reading. And you’d have every right to feel for them, if it were shovels, not gap wedges, that they brought to work.
Turns out there is one sure-fired revitalizing potion for these fellas. Birdies. Lots of birdies.
Thursday, the world’s best golfers – non-Saudi division – blew up any notion that fatigue or heat or even some tricky cosmetic surgery on a once-familiar old friend like East Lake could stop them from committing numerous offenses against par.
Led by Scheffler doing what Scheffler does, many in the Tour Championship 30-man field put up numbers that surprised even them. “Yeah, really surprised,” said Adam Scott, who was 5 under 66 Thursday. “I thought it was definitely playing tougher. I don’t know if there were easy pins, they just warmed us up with today, or what.”
Amid much uncertainty over how all of East Lake’s new wrinkles would affect scoring, Scott’s 66 was but one of five Thursday. And it still wasn’t enough to gain any ground or even keep pace with FedEx Cup points leader Scheffler. In the unique staggered scoring system they employ at the end of the playoffs, Scheffler came into the first round at 10 under, two strokes better than the next closest competitor. He exited the day seven up on second place thanks to a day’s-best round of 65. It tied his lowest-ever round – in relation to par – in 17 tours of East Lake.
Having come here the previous two years in the same position only to fall out of the race for the top Tour Championship prize, now up to $25 million, Scheffler appears in the best position yet to lock down the big money. He is the first player ever to hold a first-round lead of seven strokes or more at the Tour Championship.
Beware the volatility, though. As he did last year after shooting a first-round 61, Collin Morikawa made another move Thursday, his 66 sling-shotting him from sixth place (starting a 4 under) to a tie for second. Tied with Schauffele, who began the day two back of Scheffler, who shot 1 under 70, and lost significant ground.
“When I saw Scottie had gotten to 14, I was like, oh, got to try to just hang on to the coattails a little bit,” Morikawa said.
The new restored East Lake showed its gentle side Thursday. A year ago in similar conditions, the field averaged 1.8 under par (par was 70). Thursday, playing to a par 71, it was a combined 2.5 under. It gave up a combined five more birdies and 22 fewer bogeys than last year’s first round.
“I felt like today the golf course was set up in a way in which the good shots were rewarded,” Scheffler said. Good shots, particularly off the tee, were in no short supply for Scheffler. Hitting 10 of 14 fairways, he led the field in strokes gained off the tee.
“Scottie was almost in every fairway it looked like. It looked like he was going through wedge practice while he was out there,” said his playing partner Schauffele.
It didn’t appear so promising from the jump for Scheffler. Here he had spent all spring and summer building on his excellence, winning seven times from Augusta to Paris and points in between, banking titles like a squirrel does acorns, slowly climbing to the top of golf’s playoff pyramid.
Then Thursday, in just 15 minutes beneath an Atlanta sun set on broil, all that edge he had earned was gone. Pfffft, like a drop of sweat on an East Lake cart path. He bogeyed No. 1 while Schauffele birdied, and they were both tied at 9 under.
“I wasn’t thinking about the lead out there today,” Scheffler said. “There’s no reason to. It’s the first day of the tournament. It’s 72 holes. It’s a long time out there to be playing with a lead or whatever it is. I was just focused on staying in my own world.”
Scheffler’s world can be a very reassuring place. A place where bogeys are banished over the next 17 holes, where a run of five birdies in his closing seven holes compounded the advantage he had brought to East Lake.
Fatigue may yet be a factor, he said: “I think there’s definitely an aspect to that, especially coming off two weeks in a row where you had a really hot week in Memphis and you had some altitude this week (in Colorado) that definitely tires guys out a little bit.”
Nothing a passel of birdies can’t cure.
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