NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — The first round of the 108th PGA Championship is in the books, and the leaderboard seemingly could not be more crowded.
Seven players are tied for the lead at 3-under, including defending champion and four-time major winner Scottie Scheffler, while a whopping 48 players are within three shots of the lead. That’s the most at a major championship ever.
There’s still so much golf to be played, but if Thursday is any indication, this leaderboard combined with Aronimink Golf Club — with its windy conditions and tricky greens — is prepared to make the rest of the tournament compelling.
Which opening round was most impressive or disappointing?
Mark Schlabach: Rory McIlroy described his opening round of 4-over 74 as “s—.” He’s still struggling with his driver, which has historically been one of his greatest strengths.
After opening with a bogey on No. 10, McIlroy made a 6-foot birdie putt on No. 11. He made 10 straight pars after that and was even through 12 holes.
That’s when things fell apart in a hurry. He hit his tee shot into the right rough and made bogey on No. 4. After making a 31½-foot birdie putt on No. 5, McIlroy hit his next four tee shots to the right, leading to four straight bogeys.
According to stats guru Justin Ray, it was the first time McIlroy made bogey or worse in each of the final four holes in 990 rounds in majors.
“I’m just not driving the ball well enough,” McIlroy said. “It’s been a problem all year for the most part. Yeah, like I miss it right, and then I want to try to correct it. And then I’ll overdo it, and I’ll miss it left. It’s a little bit of back and forth that way. So that’s pretty frustrating, especially when I pride myself on driving the ball well.
“I just need to try to figure it out.”
McIlroy hit only five of 14 fairways and lost nearly a half stroke off the tee. The two-time Masters champion led the tour in that statistic (.854) coming into the week, but he’s 91st in driving accuracy (57.8%).
It’s his second straight disappointing opening round in the PGA Championship. Last year, he carded a 3-over 74 in the first round at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. He tied for 47th at 3 over.
Last year, his driver failed pre-tournament testing.
“I was frustrated because my driver failed the test,” McIlroy said. “I sort of had to get into a backup pretty quickly, and that sort of threw me for a loop a little bit. I’d say a similar sense of frustration. I’m just not driving the ball well enough to give myself enough scoring opportunities.”
Paolo Uggetti: Xander Schauffele had one of the most quietly impressive rounds of the day. In fact, it was so ho-hum that when he was asked after the round what his favorite or most impressive shot of the day was, he couldn’t think of one quickly and eventually settled on a lag putt.
“ESPN would never show this, but I hit it over the green on 8, and I was leaking some oil, and I was able to lag that to 2 feet up and over and around and down with a crosswind,” Schauffele said. “So in my mind, that was a really big moment for me.”
While Schauffele, the 2024 PGA champion, hinted at the fact that he had found something, the defending champion, Scheffler, found something else, too: a properly impressive opening round, which he hasn’t seemed to have as often this season.
As the wind picked up even more in the afternoon and the course remained difficult, Scheffler surgically plodded his way around Aronimink, missing only one fairway all day and gaining over three strokes on the field with his putting (yes, his putting!) to finish Thursday with a 3-under 67 and a comfortable place on top of the entire field. Thursday was one of only three opening rounds in the 60s that Scheffler has had in nine events this year.
“Definitely the best start I’ve gotten off to this year,” Scheffler said. “I think there’s like six or seven guys up there. I mean, it’s a really tight leaderboard. At this moment, it’s anybody’s tournament.”
Perhaps, but it’s already starting to seem like it could be Scheffler’s to lose.
What unlikely name near the top of the leaderboard do you think could stick around over the weekend?
Schlabach: I thought Australia’s Min Woo Lee was ready to break out in the Masters, but “The Chef” wasn’t yet ready to cook at Augusta National. He missed the cut after posting 78-77.
He has been close to breaking through the past couple of seasons, and he has stacked up five top-20 finishes in signature events this season, including a tie for second in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and for sixth in the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
It came together for the 27-year-old in the opening round Thursday as he tied for the early clubhouse lead at 3-under 67. Lee hit 10 of 14 fairways and 14 of 18 greens. He gained nearly two strokes around the green (1.830) and off the tee (1.712).
Obviously, Lee has to keep his foot on the gas over the last 54 holes. He missed the cut in each of his past four majors. His best finish in one of the big four was a tie for fifth in the 2023 U.S. Open.
“I think just a little bit of a mindset change, go out there and be aggressive,” Lee said. “You know that saying, ‘You can shoot yourself out of [it] Thursday’? I think I’ve nearly taken that too far and played a little bit conservative. I’m hitting the ball really good, so why not go at some pins and make some putts?”
Uggetti: Maybe this isn’t an unlikely name given his form earlier this year, but Patrick Reed’s last start was over a month ago at the Masters, he hasn’t played since and yet he’s picking right back up where he left off, shooting a tidy, bogey-free 68 on Thursday to stand one back of the lead.
“Even though I wasn’t playing tournament golf, I was kind of doing a lot of things and studying not only my golf game, but also around the golf course,” Reed said. He called the layoff “weird” but added that he was able to use the time off to rest and mentally prepare to face another major championship test. He also made a trip to Aronimink last week and spent three days on the course.
It will not surprise me if he’s in the mix come this weekend. He has the short game and approach game to hang with anyone around these vexing greens.
Biggest names with work to do Friday to stick around for the weekend?
Schlabach: It was another disastrous start for LIV Golf League captain Bryson DeChambeau, who missed the cut at the Masters after posting 76-74. It was worse Thursday when he posted a 6-over 76, his worst score to par in the PGA Championship.
DeChambeau made the turn at 4-over 39 after starting on the back nine. He made six straight pars before carding a bogey on the par-4 seventh and a double-bogey on the par-3 eighth. He closed with a birdie on the par-4 ninth.
DeChambeau’s short game let him down at Augusta National Golf Club, and it was a problem again Thursday. He went 1-for-7 scrambling. He lost about 3½ strokes around the green and more than one putting.
After walking off the course in a tie for 120th, which left him ahead of only eight golfers in the field, DeChambeau hit three buckets of balls on the driving range.
He declined to talk to reporters after his practice session.
Uggetti: The aforementioned McIlroy spent some time on the range after his round trying to dial in that driver that is giving him fits.
McIlroy will need to go quite low Friday to make the cut. Since 2021, he has missed only three cuts at the majors, and Aronimink wasn’t a venue that was expected to present a particular issue for a player who was coming off a second straight Masters victory.
Thoughts on how the course played in Round 1 and what it means for the rest of the tournament?
Schlabach: For all the talk about this being a grip-it-and-rip-it course, Aronimink Golf Club showed plenty of bite, especially after a quarter-inch of rain fell overnight. Temperatures were in the mid-50s throughout the morning wave with winds blowing 8-12 mph on a course with few trees.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be as windy today as it was,” McIlroy said. “I think it’s the breezy conditions that are sort of making the scoring what it is. It’s hard to get the ball close. Some of the pins are tucked away. Say you have a pin tucked over on the left side of the green and the wind’s coming off the left — it’s hard to get it over there.
“Probably just seeing a lot of guys hit it to 20 and 30 feet. They’re good shots, it’s just hard to make a lot of those putts.”
The par-3 eighth hole, at 245 yards, was the most difficult hole as the scoring average was 3.506. There were seven birdies, 73 bogeys and six doubles or worse.
The par-4 10th hole, at 477 yards, was the second hardest with an average of 4.442. There were 11 birdies, 55 bogeys and 11 doubles or worse.
With high temperatures expected to climb into the mid-80s on Saturday and Sunday, the course should firm up significantly.
Uggetti: There was much chatter about how Aronimink would be brought to its knees by the collective sport this week given its not-super-long par-4s and relatively friendly fairways. The talk was warranted — even McIlroy pointed out that a recent visit of his to the course yielded a simple strategy: Hit driver and worry about where it lands later.
After one round, however, it appears that the tables have been turned on those in the field. With some stiff wind Thursday that set the backdrop for the day and some particularly devilish pin placements throughout, Aronimink stood its ground.
“There was somebody earlier in the week where there was some chatter where people thought 15- to 20-under was going to win,” Jon Rahm said. “And I think that got to somebody in the PGA, and they did something about it. Because if the golf course stays like this and it keeps firming up, yeah, obviously it’s not going to be anything like that.”
Whether intentional or not, the PGA looked more like a U.S. Open setup Thursday. Players found tough lies off the bouncy fairways that required precise drives to stay in the short grass.
“The fairways are generous in width, but the firmer they get, the more they’re going to roll off into areas. So a 35- or 40-yard wide fairway is going to start to feel like a 10-yard wide fairway,” Schauffele said. “And there is no first cut either. Your ball is rolling into something that’s on the muffier side of things. I think really, really thick rough and wind and really difficult greens and tucked pin locations is why you’re seeing what you may feel like are higher scores.”
Meanwhile, the undulating greens gave players plenty of fits too. Lag putts were trickier than usual, yielding plenty of three-putts. Miss the green and now players had to hit perfect chips and use slopes to get the ball even remotely close to some tricky hole locations.
“It’s kind of comparable to what they do at St. Andrews,” Sahith Theegala said. “When I played in ’22, they put a lot of pins on the knobs to where it’s really flat right where the pin is, like dead flat, but both sides of the hole kind of go away, kind of Pinehurst-esque.”
The wind should be of similar strength Friday, which should continue to put the course on the offensive and make players think a bit more when pulling clubs on tee boxes. The real fun part will be seeing whether the PGA of America continues to favor tougher pins and keeps the greens at the lightning speeds, which could keep the scores higher than expected through the weekend.
