Canada's Mackenzie Hughes in the hunt after 1st round at BMW Championship
Hideki Matsuyama sole leader as FedEx Cup playoffs continue at Olympia Fields
One of the toughest tests of the year made it clear that par would be a great score at Olympia Fields. Leave it to Hideki Matsuyama to make a 65-foot birdie putt on his final hole Thursday to lead the BMW Championship.
Matsuyama, the Japanese player who has gone three years since his last victory, birdied two of his last three holes for a 3-under 67, one of only three rounds under par on a course that was long, tough, firm, fast and nothing like the last two weeks.
Tyler Duncan, just outside the top 30 as he tries to earn his first trip to the Tour Championship, made an 8-foot par putt on his last hole for a 68. Canada's Mackenzie Hughes, of Dundas, Ont., one of only four players who reached 3 under at any point in his round, was another shot behind.
Dustin Johnson, who won The Northern Trust last week at 30-under par, opened with a 71 and felt like it was a good day's work. He was told that even three straight rounds of 60 would not be enough to reach 30 under at Olympia Fields.
"Yeah, but I would win," he said.
By a landslide, no doubt.
Adam Hadwin of Abbotsford, B.C., shot a 4 over, Nick Taylor, also of Abbotsford, was 5 over and Corey Conners of Listowel, Ont., was 6 over.
WATCH | Hughes 1 of 3 under par at BMW Championship:
Tiger Woods needs to finish around fourth to have any hope of returning to East Lake next week in Atlanta to chase the $15 million bonus for the FedEx Cup winner. He was hovering around even par a few shots out of the lead. He finished with three straight bogeys for a 73 and was running hotter than the weather.
A three-time U.S. Open champion, Woods knows all about control and patience and key pars putts. And then he let a reasonable round get away from him.
"The course was fine. The course is in perfect shape. Not the way I wanted to finish," Woods said in brief comments.
The average score was 72.8, and only four of the 18 holes played under par. That included both par 5s. This is what the U.S. Open could have used in 2003, instead of rain-softened conditions. It was hot in the morning, baking out a dry course. The rough is 5 inches in spots. The greens were hard, making it tough to get the ball close and nearly impossible to get shots to stop on the green from out of the rough.
"I think when golf courses become like this and pars are a premium, I think I'm almost more comfortable at times because you don't feel like you'll ever get left behind when you're running off a few pars in a row," Hughes said. "Like last week, if you got off to a slow start and you were even par through six holes you felt like you were getting run over."
WATCH | Matsuyama takes lead on tough day at Olympia Fields:
Rory McIlroy was among 10 players who finished at 70 and felt the day was a success. He hasn't registered a top 10 since golf returned from the coronavirus shutdown in June, and he conceded to being lethargic without fan energy.
"I said last week if you need someone to shoot between like even par and 2 under, I'm your man," McIlroy said. "So I'm loving these conditions. It's sort of weird. The way my game feels at the minute, it's just as easy for me to shoot even par here as it was last week in Boston, for whatever reason that is.
"But this is proper golf," he said. "You've really got to think about stuff. ... It's nice to play around of golf like that again."
Also in that group at even par was Carlos Ortiz of Mexico, notable because he was the latest player to be grouped with Woods for the first time. He raved about how Woods controls the flight of his irons. He missed out on the massive crowd because there are no spectators, only carts carrying the broadcast crew.
"It's probably the least amount of people he's played in front of," Ortiz said, "and the most for me."
Champ speaks out
Cameron Champ is one of four players of Black heritage on the PGA Tour, and one of only two — the other is Tiger Woods — who reached the second of three events in the FedEx Cup post-season. He arrived at Olympia Fields wearing a white shoe on the right foot and a black shoe on the left.
On the right shoe were the words "Jacob Blake" and "BLM" for the Blake Lives Matter movement, in the wake of Blake being shot seven times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about 90 miles to the north of Olympia Fields.
On his sneakers is "Papa Champ," his grandfather who died late last year. His grandfather was Black, as his father, Jeff, who briefly played minor league baseball. His grandfather grew up in the South during the Jim Crow era.
"When people say all lives matter, yes, all lives matter, but so do Black lives," Champ said. "It's a situation where, again, as a country, as a whole we've kind of dug ourselves a hole. Now with media and people videotaping and seeing things, it's starting to come alive. People are starting to talk about it, which is the good thing. Without dialogue, without talking about it, nothing is going to happen.
"It's a decent start, but obviously there's still a lot of stuff going on that quite frankly should not be happening at all," he said. "It just has to end."
