KAPALUA, Maui >> In ideal conditions reminiscent of a domed stadium, the world’s top golfers took aim at the Plantation Course in Thursday’s opening round of the Hyundai Tournament of Champions and rarely missed.
Patrick Reed finished at the top of the pile with an 8-under 65 that included an eagle from 18 feet at the closing hole. But even with this stellar round, the defending champion didn’t run and hide from the rest of this winners-only field.
He is just one shot clear of playing partner and world No. 1 Jordan Spieth, who came home with a 7-under 66. Brandt Snedeker, J.B. Holmes and Danny Lee are another stroke back after carding 6-under 67s on this expansive par-73 layout to stay close to the lead. Argentina’s Fabian Gomez is alone in sixth at 5-under 68.
Squares on the scorecard were rare indeed if you wanted to be among the leaders. Instead, circles were the order of the day as the PGA Tour’s best managed 141 birdies and only 52 bogeys and eight doubles on this picture-perfect day in paradise.
Among the 32 golfers playing this week, 25 of them shot under par to remain in contention entering today’s second tour of duty of this beautiful patch of land designed by Ben Crenshaw. Among the top five finishers, only Holmes carded a bogey.
As for Reed and Spieth, they genuinely enjoy playing together and seeing who can one-up the other. They will be in the final pairing again today as they try not only to beat each other’s brains out, but the rest of the field as well.
“Yeah, any time I play with Jordan we always have a good time and we seem to play pretty solid with each other,” Reed said. “So, just another day to go out and play some golf with a friend and we went out and played some fun golf. Both of us did.”
Spieth led by one at the turn after Reed struggled with the speed of the greens on the front side. The Dallas native said Reed would have shot 13 under if he had played the front nine as well as the back. Reed went 6 under over the final six holes.
“If he had his putter going at the start of the round, he missed quite a few pretty short-length putts on the front nine or he should have shot really 5 under on that front nine,” Spieth said.
“For whatever reason it is, whether we want to feed off each other or we want to beat the crap out of each other, we somehow play well together. We still want to outdo each other even when we’re teammates in a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup. So it’s a good pairing. It’s definitely easy to feed off of when you’re playing with somebody who’s playing as well as someone who you played well with for a number of years now.”
And this isn’t just a two-horse race. Like Spieth, Snedeker came over early to get a feel for these grainy Bermuda greens you find most often in Texas and Florida. Everyone knows Snedeker can putt on a shag carpet. Given time, he can knock them home here, too.
“The greens always pose a big problem,” Snedeker said. “You get comfortable on greens and be aggressive on putts that you know are fast or slow. But you just have to know the putts, they’re hard to read. So that’s kind of the reason I came over early to do that.”
A rare three-putt bogey by Holmes at the par-4 12th led to four consecutive birdies on the back nine to keep him in the chase. Bubba Watson is also in the hunt at 4-under 69, despite two bogeys on his card. World No. 2 Jason Day showed some rust on the front side with eight pars before birdieing the ninth en route to a 3-under 70.
