As one of the pre-tournament favourites, Shane Lowry’s opening round of 66 at the PGA Tour’s Cognizant Classic would typically have him hot on the heels of the first round leader, but not when Jake Knapp had earlier fired a 59.
Lowry, playing in the afternoon wave on a largely benign weather day at PGA National, was 12 strokes behind before he’d even made his way to the first tee, but he set about the gradual task of reeling Knapp in in ideal fashion by birdieing the first and the adding two more on the front, these coming on the par-5 third and par-3 seventh.
Another birdie on 10 took him to four-under, and then excellent back-to-back iron approaches on the 13th and 14th – the first a wedge to tap-in distance and the second a long-iron to 13 feet on the statistical second-hardest hole on the course – saw him add two more and make it to -6.
The first real mistake of the day came on 16 where, having found the fairway bunker off the tee, he pushed his approach and found the hazard, but limited the damage when he was able to get up-and-down from 134 yards to save bogey. Getting a little edgy towards the end, he rolled in a 22-footer for par on 17, then misread his 12-foot birdie putt on the last to sign for a five-under 66 that leaves him tied for 16th and seven off the lead.
Seamus Power started on the other side of the course and birdied three of the opening nine – including the first two legs of the three-hole Bear Trap – but dropped a shot on 14 to make the turn at -2.
Unable to gain any real momentum on the front side of the course, a lone birdie on the third was cancelled out by a bogey on six and the unusually low scoring leaves him tied for 76th and needing to shoot at least the same score again and likely better on Friday if he’s to see weekend action.
Knapp, who won his first PGA Tour title at last year’s Mexico Open, actually had a 20-footer for eagle and a PGA Tour record-tying 58 on the last, finds himself four shots clear of Daniel Berger, Russell Henley and Sami Valimaki.
“I knew obviously I had it going really early, but at the same time, that can happen and then it can kind of fizzle out pretty quick,” said Knapp. “I thought I did a good job of just trying to focus on shot by shot and not letting what happened or what could happen affect anything.
“Then once I made the long putt on 15, it was like, okay, now this is kind of here.
“But at the same time, didn’t let it affect the game plan or anything like that. Tried to hit an aggressive shot into 16, 17 and 18, and just tried to — knew I was hitting it well, so tried to just birdie everything today.”
Berger’s day started by being forced to go back to the tee after his opening drive got lodged in one of the palm trees that line the fairways and he was unable to definitively identify it.
“I thought I played well, but then someone shot 59,” Berger joked. “Clearly the course was not the old Bear Trap that we’re used to. But still a great start to the event, and just got to continue to do what I did today for the next three days.”
Leave a comment