Shane Lowry suffered more frustration on the greens after he couldn’t take advantage of a clinical iron display as he left himself with work to do at the Cognizant Classic.
Lowry leads the field in strokes gained approach to the green at PGA National but was a disappointing 111th in putting as lies on one-under-par after a 70 which is eight shots behind Austin Smotherman who contrastingly made 132 feet of putts in a nine-under 62.
The Offaly man carded three bogeys and two birdies on his opening nine but after picking up two birdies in three holes to start his back nine and hit red figures he missed birdie chances from six, six and twelve feet coming home to leave him in a share of 35th place.
He is one shot clear of his compatriot Seamus Power who let a good start slip with two late bogeys for a level-par 71 on his first appearance in almost a month.
At the top, Smotherman became the seventh player to shoot 62 or better at PGA National in this event. The others: Jake Knapp (59 in round 1, 2025), Matt Jones (61 in round 1, 2021), Brian Harman (61 in round 2, 2012), Chris Kirk (62 in round 2, 2023), Brandon Hagy (62 in round 2, 2021) and Tiger Woods (62 in the final round, 2012).
“It was a pretty easy round,” Smotherman said, “on a golf course that shouldn’t be this easy.”
Smotherman — fueled by six consecutive birdies on holes 7 through 12 — tapped in for a birdie on the par-5 finishing hole for the second 62 in his PGA TOUR career. He also shot 62 in the first round of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in October 2022.
Smotherman hasn’t won any of his first 81 starts on TOUR. He also decided to trial playing without a line on the ball this week to see what that did for his putting. It’s working for now.
“Trying to just be a little bit more freeing with the stroke, be an artist on the greens, see the line, kind of let it just be external, look at the hole, see where I want it to go in and just trust that I’m pretty good at just aiming in the general vicinity that needs to happen,” Smotherman said. “Then from there, just letting good speed take over, and hopefully the hole gets in the way.”
Smotherman holds a one shot lead over Nico Echavarria who was bogey-free in his eight-under 63 with both players ranked inside the top-5 in strokes gained putting.
Brooks Koepka has a lot of work to do to make the cut after he opened with a three-over 75 in the difficult afternoon conditions.
Scoring HERE
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