Shane Lowry recovered from a double bogey on the eleventh with a strong finish to post a one-under 69 and lie four shots off the early pace after day one of the FedEx St Jude Championship.
Lowry had started his round well with birdies on the par-5 3rd and 6th but all his hard work came unstuck when he found the water long of the par-3 11th and took a double bogey five. He fell over par for the day with a bogey on the par-3 14th but responded brilliantly with back to back birdies on 15 and 16 to get back into red figures and gather some momentum heading into round two.
While Lowry finished with a flourish, Rory McIlroy finished in an ambulance. The Masters champion dropped four shots in his last three holes to slump to a four-over 74.
McIlroy, who hasn’t competed since the Open Championship last month, initially wasn’t in the field for this event but opted to play to allay fears of rustiness ahead of next week’s second playoff event at the BMW Championship.
He looked sluggish as he mixed two birdies and two bogeys in his first eleven holes but his chances of victory here look all but over after a bogey, bogey, double bogey finish.
At the top, Jordan Spieth shares the lead with Michael Thorbjornsen, Kurt Kitayama, Jake Knapp and Michael Kim on five-under 65. Chasing them are Tommy Fleetwood, Gary Woodland, Hideki Matsuyama, Chris Gotterup, Bud Cauley and Adam Scott on four-under.
It was an uncharacteristically clean card for Spieth who was bogey free with birdies on the 9th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 15th and his chances of qualifying for next week’s BMW Championship look very promising.
Spieth was the only player of the 70 in the field to make the playoffs without posting a top-10 this season and even now he needs a top-23 finish to make the 50-player cut for next week.
Spieth, now 33, hasn’t won on TOUR in over four years, with his last win coming at the 2022 RBC Heritage. His last top-10 finish came over a year ago, at THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson, where he finished fourth.
“Outside looking in versus inside trying to hold onto it is a little different mentality, maybe helpful, but after a good start that all changes, right?” Spieth said on Thursday.
“I’m just in a very different place about the game of golf than I was the last couple seasons heading into this event.
“Just knowing that I’m a lot better golfer than I’ve been in a very long time and continue to believe in that,” he continued. “If low scores come, they come. If they don’t, it doesn’t change the fact that I know that I’m better than I’ve been in a long time. That mentality is what I came into today and stuck with it throughout the round, and it paid off.”
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