Roberto Castro used to believe it was best to be conservative during the first few holes of a tournament, getting a feel for the course before getting too aggressive.
That is not the case anymore, especially not in ideal conditions at the Sanderson Farms Championship.
Castro on Thursday shot a 10-under 62, his lowest score on the PGA Tour, to take a two-shot lead at the Country Club of Jackson. It took him just a few shots to realize a low score was there for the taking.
Photo: AP
“It’s just so soft out there,” Castro said. “It’s a great golf course, but when the conditions are soft, the scores are going to be low.”
Castro, 30, was consistent and avoided trouble all afternoon with a bogey-free round. He made 10 birdies — five on each nine.
Conditions were forgiving thanks to a course softened by rain and very little wind, and players were allowed to use preferred lies because of the wet conditions.
Photo: AFP
However, there were plenty of birdies for the taking during the first round and several players took advantage — 103 of the 122 players who finished the first round shot par or better. Nine players were still on the course when the round was halted due to darkness.
Aaron Baddeley and Bryce Molder were tied for second at 64. Adam Hadwin and Brian Davis shot 65.
Castro began his round on the back nine and, after making five birdies on the first eight holes — including four straight from the 12th to the 15th — realized it “could be a special day.”
Although the 62 was his best on the tour, he has gone low before, shooting a nine-under 63 at The Players Championship in 2013. He is winless on the tour in more than 100 career starts.
Castro said the greens at the Country Club of Jackson are almost always good, but the rain made them even more forgiving than usual.
“You’re never really worried about getting more than three or four feet past the hole, so it’s a very comfortable speed to make a lot of putts,” Castro said.
Baddeley has won three times on the tour, most recently in 2011, but has limited tour status after struggling last season. He started his round on the back nine and was five-under through just seven holes, boosted by an eagle on No. 15 when he chipped in with a lob wedge from about 35 yards.
“I wasn’t trying to push the issue,” Baddeley said. “I was just cruising along, trying to just stay in the moment, hit the shot and stay patient, because the last thing you want to do is force an issue and then you make a bogey or you just hit a bad shot when you didn’t need to.”
Molder was seven-under through just 10 holes, but cooled off down the stretch to settle for a 64. He missed the cut in his first two events this season and took last week off to “just kind of reset.”
It worked for at least one day.
“I knew that I wasn’t that far off, even though sometimes it feels a mile off, but it’s not,” Molder said. “I just kind of was like, all right, how can we get our mind-set right so that we can actually play some good golf.”
Taiwanese world No. 1 women’s doubles star Hsieh Su-wei on Saturday overcame a first-set loss to win her opening match at the Madrid Open. Top seeds Hsieh and partner Elise Mertens of Belgium, with whom she last month won her fourth Indian Wells women’s doubles title, bounced back from a rocky first set to beat Asia Muhammad of the US and Aldila Sutjiadi of Indonesia 2-6, 6-4, 10-2. Hsieh and Mertens were next to face Heather Watson of the UK and Xu Yifan of China in the round of 16. Thirty-eight-year-old Hsieh last month reclaimed her world No. 1 spot after her Indian
EYES ON THE PRIZE: Armed with three solid men’s singles shuttlers and doubles Olympic champions, Taiwan aim to make their first Thomas Cup semi-final, Chou Tien-chen said Taiwanese badminton star Tai Tzu-ying yesterday quickly dispatched Malaysia’s Goh Jin Wei in straight sets, while her male counterpart Chou Tien-chen beat Germany’s Kai Schaefer, as Taiwan’s women’s and men’s teams won their Group B opening rounds of the TotalEnergies BWF Thomas and Uber Cup Finals in Chengdu, China. World No. 5 Tai beat Goh 21-19, 22-20 in a speedy 33 minutes, her fourth straight victory over the world No. 24 shuttler since they first faced each other in the quarter-finals of the 2018 Malaysia Open, where Tai went on to win the women’s singles title. Malaysia followed up Tai’s opening victory
Chen Yi-tung (陳奕通) secured a historic Olympic berth on Sunday by winning the senior men’s foil event at the 2024 Asia Oceania Zonal Olympic Fencing Qualifiers in United Arab Emirates. Chen defeated Samuel Elijah of Singapore 15-4 in the final in Dubai to secure the only wild card in the event, making him the first male Olympian fencer from Taiwan in 36 years and only the sixth Taiwanese fencer to ever qualify for the quadrennial event. The last appearance by a Taiwanese male fencer at the Olympics was in 1988, when Wang San-tsai (王三財) and Cheng Ming-hsiang (鄭明祥) competed in Seoul. The
A soccer jersey carrying a national map including disputed Western Sahara has become a hot commodity in Morocco after a diplomatic dispute with Algeria. Retailers said RS Berkane jerseys have been flying off the shelves after a Confederation of African Football (CAF) Cup match against Algerian club USM Alger was canceled last month over the jerseys. “We are overwhelmed by the influx of messages and requests,” said Brahim Rabii, representative of the official RS Berkane jersey distributor. Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco in 2021, partly over the issue of Western Sahara. The former Spanish colony is largely controlled by Morocco, but claimed