DUBLIN, Ohio – When former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover pulled up to the front gate at Jack Nicklaus’s Muirfield Village Golf Club this week, he asked the attendant how he was doing.
“He said, ‘If I was any happier, I’d be dancing.’ I’d never heard that one before,” Glover said. “And then he followed that up by saying, ‘And nobody wants that, trust me.’ ”
On a warm, sunny Thursday at the Memorial, Davis Riley danced around Jack’s Place to the tune of 5-under 67, to lead Englishman Matt Wallace by a stroke.
Riley, 26, made birdie on three of the final four holes to vault to the top of the leaderboard. But it was a par save at the second hole that jump-started his round after an errant tee shot left stopped behind a tree. Riley pitched out sideways and then wedged inside 3 feet and holed the putt.
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“I felt like that was kind of a momentum-keeper shot and hole and, yeah, that kind of kept the round going,” he said.
He made a birdie at the third and finished with a flurry of birdies including a 13-footer at the ninth.
“I thought that I left the last one short and thankfully it fell in on the last roll and it was a good way to end the day,” he said.
A year ago, he shot an opening-round 67, too, and was part of a six-way tie for the lead before finishing T-13. Riley, who claimed his first PGA Tour win last month at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, entered the week having missed four straight cuts.
“I hit a really hard reset at the beginning of this week and said to my caddie James (Edmonston) – he helped me out a lot with that and he’s like, ‘Look, you just need to keep doing your thing, good golf is right around the corner.’ I know it’s weird saying that when you win, six, seven weeks ago, but it’s just one of those things to try to kind of get that consistency part, I feel like I need to be a little easier on myself and just keep playing my golf,” he said. “Once you get a taste of (winning), you want to get back there as soon as possible, and I feel like I’ve been getting in my own way a little bit.”
Asked if he would treat himself to one of Muirfield’s trademark milkshakes after his strong start, Riley said he’d hold off because it would keep him up all night and he’s got an early wake-up call for his 8:12 a.m. tee time. “If tomorrow goes well I’ll probably have to have one,” he said.
Wallace waiting for his 'Hello, world," moment
Matt Wallace hasn’t been too happy with his game of late. After notching his first PGA Tour win at the Corales Puntacana Championship in late March, he has missed the cut in five of his last seven cuts, including last week. But the 33-year-old took advantage of calm conditions in the morning and birdied five of his first nine holes, including sinking a 23-foot putt at the fifth hole.
When asked to describe where he was in the process of becoming the player he wants to be, Wallace said, “Close. Not there. I’m waiting for that Tiger moment. That, ‘Hello world,’ one. I feel my game is there to be able to compete with the best, I just haven’t done it and I haven’t shown that.”
But for one day, at least, Wallace coasted around the course designed by golf great Jack Nicklaus in his lowest score in seven total rounds here. The rest of the field found it to be tough sledding —the first-round scoring average of 74.000 was the highest at the Memorial since 2000.
“I was on the 17th green there and I felt, this is what Jon Rahm does, these types of days. It must feel really nice,” Wallace recounted. “And I was like, yeah, it feels really good. Because I was playing great. So he does it a lot more times than I do. So that’s what I want to try and do. If I can keep doing that, I know that I can win when I’m in position to win. So try and do that a little bit more.”
Rahm, Spieth are lurking
Rahm, the world No. 2 and the Memorial champion in 2020, may not have been doing the Rumba over his opening-round 2-under 70 (T-10), but said he was pleased as punch with his start.
“It’s too bad I couldn’t take advantage of the, let’s say, easier conditions on the front nine. There was no wind, great temperature, perfect greens. Gave myself chances and couldn’t convert a couple of them,” said Rahm, who needed 31 strokes with his short stick. “I think it’s a really good round of golf that if a couple putts dropped could have been a really good one.”
Rahm held a six-stroke lead heading into the final round in 2021 after posting a third-round 64, but had to withdraw from the tournament after testing positive for COVID-19. But the first time he played at Muirfield Village in 2017, he shot 73-77 to miss the cut and complained afterwards to his caddie Adam Hayes.
“I think I told Adam, ‘Man, I don’t know if I’m ever going back to that golf course.’ And he was telling me, ‘You’re going to go back and you’re going to love it. You are tailor made for that golf course,’ ” Rahm recalled.
Spieth, who played in the afternoon wave, was a stroke better than Rahm on Thursday and bogey-free until the last hole when he thinned a 7-iron from a fairway bunker.
“I had a clean lie,” Spieth said. “It really was an easy shot.”
The 29-year-old Texan holed out for birdie at No. 10 from a bunker and that wasn’t his only magic trick around the greens: he was 9 of 10 in scrambling.
“Feel like my touch is back,” said Spieth, who missed the cut last week. “It started on the first hole today. I mean, I feel like bunker play is one of the strengths of my game, and the last couple tournaments it’s been really poor, actually poor enough to not allow me to have a chance to win golf tournaments. I hit a pretty fantastic shot there and it just gave me a lot of confidence.”
He's a magician 🔥
Ridiculous touch from the bunker for @JordanSpieth! pic.twitter.com/b5dhZpgcH5
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 1, 2023
Spieth, who injured his left wrist and withdrew from the AT&T Byron Nelson as a precautionary measure and has been taping up his wrist ever since, explained that he had been reluctant to practice from the sand and that decision had come back to haunt him.
“It’s the one thing that hurts the most is flicking a bunker shot over like that. So we held off on that for a couple weeks, and then I put a lot of work in this week with it and it felt fine and it certainly yielded results today,” he said.
Hubbard, Lowry flirt with lead
Mark Hubbard and Shane Lowry danced to the top of the leaderboard but lost their rhythm and were among five golfers at 69. Hubbard, who got in the tournament as an alternate, climbed to 6 under through 15 holes but made bogeys on his final three holes.
“I told my caddie that’s the least mad I’m ever going to be bogeying the last three,” he said. “I mean, 17 basically felt like a par. I shot 69 for the fifth straight round. So that’s pretty cool.”
Lowry, who started on the back nine, made five birdies in a row beginning at 11 but only one the rest of the day.
“I rolled in some lovely putts early on. You’re not going to keep that going all day. I had a couple of slip ups, but, you know, you’re going to make bogeys around this course after hitting bad shots,” Lowry said. “I said to my caddie walking there on 5 or 6 that it’s important not to get down on myself after making a few bogeys; 3 under’s a pretty good score around here. I’m pretty happy with my start.”
And then I woke up 😂😂😂😂 https://t.co/SuFb7Y2oGg
— Shane Lowry (@ShaneLowryGolf) June 1, 2023
Tough day at the office for some of the top dogs
Muirfield Village played firm and fast with thick rough and exposed any weakness in a player’s game.
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler struggled to find fairways (7 of 14) and lost more than 3 strokes to the field on the greens (115 of 119) en route to shooting 2-over 74. It was his highest first-round score on Tour since the 2021 Shriners Children’s Open (74).
Local resident Jason Day, who won last month, posted 76 and world No. 5 Xander Schauffele shot 77, his highest score since the second round of the 2022 Masters.
But their woes paled in comparison to Billy Horschel, who went from first (last year) to almost worst. Horshel’s opening-round 84 was the second-highest score in the field as only Chad Ramey, who made a 13 on No. 9 and shot 88.
“My confidence is the lowest it’s been in my entire career, I think ever in my entire golf career,” Horschel said. “So it’s funny, as low as it feels, it feels like I’m not that far off at the same time. Which is insane to see when you see me shoot 84 today.”
It marked Horschel’s highest round since he shot 85 in the second round of the 2016 British Open.
“As much as I would love to throw in the towel and not come out tomorrow, that’s just not in me. I’m just not one of those players,” he said. “I’ll show up and I’ll go out there and give it my all like I always do and try and find something, try and play well, and move on. I mean, it’s a day and I’ve had plenty of these days this year. Not this bad, but it’s just a day. We’ll get by it.”
Dylan Frittelli also withdrew from the tournament after shooting 15-over for his first 14 holes.
