Two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson fired an eight-under 62 on Thursday to seize a two-stroke lead after the opening round of the Travelers Championship.
The 36-year-old American fired nine birdies in all, including four on the final five holes, the last coming on 18 after a 139-yard second shot that bounced into the flagstick and stopped just beyond the cup.
“It was about playing steady,” Watson said. “It was about being consistent. It was about hitting the driver somewhat in play, hitting the wedges somewhat close and then making the putts, and that’s what I did.”
Watson is seeking his eighth career PGA Tour triumph on the same TPC River Highlands course where he won his first in 2010 and produced two other top-10 showings.
It would be his second title of the season, having won the World Golf Championships HSBC Champions event in China in November last year.
Watson matched the low round of his career to grab the advantage, with fellow Americans Keegan Bradley, Harris English, Jason Gore and Brian Stuard and South Korea’s Noh Seung-yul sharing second on 64.
Birdies at the third, sixth, seven and ninth holes left Watson four-under at the turn.
He birdied the 12th, 14th and 15th, before taking his lone bogey at 16, but answered by closing with his third set of back-to-back birdies of the day.
“They were all good,” he said.
Watson took advantage of the benign conditions compared with last week’s difficult terrain at the US Open at Chambers Bay, where Jordan Spieth added his second major title after collecting the Masters green jacket in April.
“Coming off last week, you can score around here, you can hit some good shots,” Watson said. “You still have to play golf, but it’s more relaxed and you still feel like you can score around here.”
Watson’s playing partner Zach Johnson fired a 65 to share seventh along with fellow Americans Scott Langley, Chris Stroud, Robert Garrigus, Tom Gillis, Scott Brown and Will MacKenzie, as well as Sweden’s Carl Pettersson.
Taiwan’s Pan Cheng-tsung carded a 67 for a share of 27th place.
Watson has turned only one of four prior 18-hole leads into a victory, in 2011 in New Orleans. It was his first lead after the opening round since last year’s Phoenix Open.
First-round leaders have won the Travelers Championship four times, the most recent being Kenny Perry of the US in 2009.
Noh birdied his first four holes on the way to his lowest round since a 62 in the first round of the 2012 Deutsche Bank Championship.
The South Korean missed three cuts and withdrew from a title defense in New Orleans, before sharing third in Memphis earlier this month for his lone top-10 effort of the season.
Additional reporting by staff writer
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS