The THE PLAYERS has started even more colourful and effervescent than in previous editions. In 2022 the number of players with a card of 68 or better after the first day was fourteen; in 2023 it was eleven and this year it will probably be more than twenty (the day was suspended due to lack of light with nine players on the field). Normally, if it doesn’t rain, the greens gain some firmness as the week progresses and things get a little more complicated.
The evening shift has maintained a very high standard in terms of names at the top of the table, as McIlroy (-7) and Schauffele (-7) have been joined by Wyndham Clark (-7), Matt Fitzpatrick (-6) and even a certain Scottie Scheffler (-5), who signed a bogey on hole 1 hitting from the centre of the fairway and missing a very short par putt, and then did not leave another blot on the card, dissecting the Stadium course of the TPC Sawgrass with the efficiency that characterises him.
And no, the Texan has not putted badly. He has not been one of the best, it is true. The five players who precede him in the table are far ahead of him in the SG:Putting statistic, where Scottie appears 38th, so it is shown again, what a coincidence, that he does not need to be one of the best in this area to appear very high in the ranking. Rory has been the best and Clark, the third best…
We may get very heavy with this issue, but it is very true and interesting: if Scheffler maintains his average tee to green records, which are again of a very high level, he probably does not need to improve too much on the greens to be fighting for the win in the last nine holes on Sunday. He just needs to be among the forty best to be competitive. If in addition, he goes from less to more on the greens, then he can even win by a landslide, as happened last week at Bay Hill… For now, he already chains five competition rounds below 70 strokes at TPC Sawgrass, which is not easy, although sometimes, on days so rich in birdies, it does not seem so.
Clark, like Scheffler, has only signed one bogey in the initial round and continues to show that his desire to become the best player in the world, publicly expressed when he rejected an offer from LIV Golf, was not a chimera. As for Fitzpatrick, he is the one who for now takes the English flag in the attempt to place it for the first time in fifty editions next to the winner’s trophy, as the next Englishmen in the table are already a little behind, Fleetwood (-2) and Rose (-2), although with enough margin of manoeuvre, as this has just started.
However, there are margins of manoeuvre and margins of manoeuvre… You have to be very bold or optimistic, for example, to consider that Rickie Fowler (+2), Jordan Spieth (+2), Will Zalatoris (+1) or Viktor Hovland (+1) still have some chance of victory. It is well known that tournaments are not won on Thursdays, but the real possibility of a victory can be seriously compromised. In Florida today, more than seventy players have beaten the course, but the Stadium course continues to severely penalise bad play or disorder.
