Shane Lowry’s iron-play was a little off the boil in the opening round of the PGA Tour’s Cadillac Championship at Doral’s Blue Monster course as the Offaly man shot a level-par 72 that leaves him in the middle of the pack in a tie for 37th.
He came hot out of the gates, making birdies on the par-5 opener and par-4 second, but he then bogeyed three of the next seven and made the turn at +1 with decent birdie chances going begging on five, seven and eight and his short game and putting failing to bail him out on four, six and nine.
He got back on the birdie trail on the par-5 10th after splashing to tap-in range from the greenside bunker, then got back into red figures with another par-5 birdie on the 12th, but that was the final circle on his scorecard and a dropped shot on the 15th was the only deviation from par.
While he may rank 61st in Strokes Gained: Approach for round one, his tee time in the third-to-last group meant he faced tougher scoring conditions as the wind picked up in south Florida and the greens got a little firmer.
Playing in the early part of the day, Cameron Young took full advantage as the reigning Players Championship winner made eight birdies in a bogey-free effort that gave him sole possession of the lead at eight-under.
With world number one Scottie Scheffler alongside, it wasn’t the New Yorker’s imperious power off the tee that set him up for success, rather it was his iron play, short game and putting, ranking ninth, third and third respectively on those metrics and comfortably outperforming his playing partner who didn’t get any aspect of his game in particular firing and carded a one-under 71.
“I don’t think there’s anything that I can really put my finger on,” Young replied when asked if he could explain the reason for his impressive improvement with the scoring clubs. “I feel like the golf ball change the end of last season, I think it started then probably. So that’s been a big factor. Then, yeah, always working on little stuff. Right now I just feel like I have pretty good control over the speed that I’m hitting the ball with and then obviously out here controlling your shapes is really important. So I feel like I’ve been doing that pretty well and today just had a great day scoring.”
In hot pursuit are Jordan Spieth and Alex Smalley who shot matching 65s to lie a shot back at seven-under.
The former played virtually flawless golf until the turn where he was five-under after three birdies and an eagle which came courtesy of a chip-in from the fringe on the par-5 eighth.
Though he bogeyed the par-5 12th with a wedge in his hand for his third shot, he made it to eight-under after 15 but bogeyed 16 and then finished with two pars.
“It was a very nice start,” Spieth said. “I felt like I’ve had some tournaments this year where I’ve gotten off to these nice starts early in the first round, front nine, and then we play difficult golf courses or I just hadn’t really held it, so I remember I went to Michael [Greller, Spieth’s caddie] during the day today and just said, Let’s set a new goal, let’s pretend we’re starting over just to stay aggressive, just to kind of seeing holes to make birdies versus seeing holes for how hard they are, if that makes sense. So it was a good strategy. I don’t foresee 7-unders every day, but when the wind was down to start, it was a good time to try to take advantage. And the greens were soft enough and not quite fast enough to where if you were controlling the ball off the tee you were going to get some looks.”
Nick Taylor holds sole possession of fourth place at -6, with Nico Echavarria one further back on -5 and Gary Woodland, Brian Harman and Andrew Putnam in a three-way tie for sixth at four-under.
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