Scott and Fox lead down-under brigade at PGA Championship
Adam Scott gets his round underway today – image PGA of America
An agonising double bogey, when playing his final hole in near darkness, has cost Adam Scott a possible share of the first-round lead at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club, but despite the late hiccup the 42 year old is just three from the lead currently held by American Eric Cole.
Cole, however, has four holes of his opening round to play when he returns to the course early on Friday morning and dependent on how he negotiates those remaining holes will determine just how far Scott is from the lead heading into the second round.
Around 30 players are required to complete round one on Friday after a nearly two hour delay to the start of play due to frost would mean all 156 players could not complete their rounds.
Frost delayed the start by nearly two hours – image PGA of America
Scott had been near faultless until a pulled approach at the last left him in an awkward downhill lie in the greenside bunker and perhaps trying to get a little too cute he left the ball in the bunker and was then unable to get up and down from there.
Scott and New Zealand’s Ryan Fox are the best of the down under brigade, Fox playing early on day one taking the early lead and in fact had moved to 3 under when he birdied the 14th before a bogey at the 17th after a wild drive saw him eventually tied with Scott in a share of 6th place with his round of 68.
“First of all, it’s probably pretty surprising as I didn’t have a lot of prep coming in and had four weeks off in the lead-up to this with a few things going on,” said Fox.
“But, yeah, I played — for the most part played pretty solid. There were some pretty scruffy iron shots and my short game saved me. I road a pretty hot putter today, which was nice.
Fox suffered from pneumonia in recent weeks and returned home to Auckland to be there for the birth of his second child and to rest up from the illness.
“At the Masters, I was pretty sick on the weekend. Tried to play Hilton Head. Withdrew from there after nine holes, just feeling awful. Got home and got told I caught pneumonia, which pretty much explained why I felt so bad.
“I had a couple of weeks off just being Dad and trying to recover from that. That took a fair while on antibiotics to get over that. Basically, as soon as I got over that, our daughter was born, which was just over two weeks ago now. Our second daughter was born, Margot. So I had a few sleepless nights and not a lot of practice.
“One of the days I was supposed to go to practice, Auckland flooded for the third time this year. So I think I drive around Auckland 27 kilometers in four hours in chaos. It wasn’t quite the ideal preparation for a major, but I was kind of hoping the fact I needed a break after a busy start to the year and being mentally fresh would have been important this week.
“So far it’s sort of shown that you need to be pretty patient around this golf course and accept that you are going to have a couple of bad bounces, you’re going to get a few bad lies. Yes, sort of nice to come here fresh ask just be able to accept that.”
Ryan Fox – found some trouble today but a fine start nonethless – image PGA of America
Cam Davis is the next best of the Australasians at 1 over and tied for 27th. A double bogey at his 16th hole brought unstuck a fine effort to that point but he is well enough placed on what is a high scoring layout.
The leader, Cole is the son of South African Bobby Cole and former LPGA Tour Rookie of the Year, Laura Baugh. Bobby Cole won numerous events in his homeland but perhaps his most recognised golfing achievement was when leading the Open Championship into the final round in 1975 before finishing one shot behind the playoff between Tom Watson and Jack Newton.
He married Laura Baugh on two occasions, the couple producing seven children with Eric Cole now playing the PGA Tour after gaining his card via the Korn Ferry Tour last year. Cole finished runner-up at the Honda Classic earlier this year.
Eric Cole – the leader still has four holes to play – image PGA of America
