Knox grabs early lead at Safeway Open, with many others in the hunt after one round
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
To say that 2020 has been a weird year would be an understatement.
However, there is one sense of normalcy in Napa this fall. It’s in the form of the Safeway Open.
It’s the first event on the PGA Tour schedule this season after being the third last season. The tournament has a $6 million purse, with the winner receiving $1.188 million. The tournament is a good way to get the new season underway as well with the winner receiving 500 FedExCup points.
Things got off to a fast start in the morning session of play. Russell Knox shot a 9-under-par 63 to grab the lead. The highlight of the round for Knox came at the fifth hole when he birdied the par-five, 550-yarder.
“I played good today obviously,” Knox said of his round. “Looking back on it, I knew this week that par 5 scoring would be big to your ultimate performance. I hit a beautiful drive there on No. 5 and hit a nice little 3-hybrid in there and managed to get it back there kind of close and made a nice putt. Obviously, it was a day where a lot of good things happened, and definitely nice to get off to a good start. You know, I’ve struggled first rounds for so long I feel like, so one of my main goals this season was to get off to a better start. I didn’t quite expect this, but nice to shoot a good score.”
Knox also birdied holes 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 16, and 18. He also hit 11 of 14 greens in regulation.
Later on in the day, Cameron Percy was also able to shoot up the leaderboard. He started on the back nine and birdied holes 10 and 13 before getting three straight birdies on holes 16 through 18 while also birdieing holes three and five as well and ending his round with a birdie on holes three, five, and nine. All that put him solely in a tie for second place heading into the second round. He hit an astounding 17 of 18 greens in regulation on the day as well.
“It was pretty good. I hit a lot of fairways and I actually had a lot of perfect numbers for me to attack some of (the) pins, so that made it a lot easier so I was able to get pretty close,” Percy explained. “And then they weren’t spinning too much, so your wedges and that the first two days were spinning backward and today they stopped. Made it a lot easier.”
Sam Burns ended the day in a tie for second. After starting off slow, he caught fire on the back nine. The highlight of it was an eagle on the 16th hole to put him very much in contention after one round of play. Burns also got birdies on hole one, four, and then 9-12. A bogey on 17 bumped him back to being tied for second. However, he definitely left some shots on the course by getting on the green in regulation in 13 of 17 holes.
“I hit a good tee shot. We had I think maybe 250 or so into the wind, couldn’t really get a hybrid there, it wasn’t a 3-wood, so we just tried to hit a hybrid kind of front left part of the green,” Burns said of his eagle on 16. “Hit it just short of the green and then really just trying to kind of lag that putt up there close and it just kind of, one of those things, happened to go in.”
Bo Hoag also finished up in a tie for second. He collected eight birdies on the day leading him to shoot a 64 round.
“I just felt like I gave myself a lot of chances,” Hoag said of his good first-round performance. “It seemed like every hole was inside 20 feet, you know, at a minimum, so just gave myself a ton of opportunities and made it kind of easy on myself. Not always as easy as we think it can be, but today I made it easy.”
Overall, Hoag was also had an astounding day hitting greens in regulation as he was 17-for-18 on the day.
For two-time defending champion Brendan Steele, he also got off to a good start in the season’s first event. By shooting a seven-under, 65, he was able to vault his way up to a tie for third following his round. While Steele didn’t get any eagles, he did rack up a total of seven birdies on the day, which put him tied for fifth after the event’s first day.
Pat Perez was the other player tied for fifth with Steele after knocking down seven birdies on the day. The main reason he wasn’t up a little higher is that he hit only 14 of 18 greens in regulation.
Steele was able to get in the greens in regulation throughout his round as he hit 15 of his 18 greens played in regulation.
On the other end of the good, there is always some mediocre to bad rounds. For tournament ambassador Phil Mickelson, it was a mediocre round.
“I let a lot of shots go today, which was disappointing, and I didn’t drive it well on the front nine, for sure,” Mickelson explained. “For me to shoot under par, it’s actually a mini victory in that I didn’t shoot myself out of the tournament.
“I’ve got to go shoot 7, 8 under par tomorrow to get in it for the weekend, but it’s very doable. I’ve actually have been playing well enough to do it, but not today. The putter feels good even though I didn’t make some that I could have, but I felt like it was a day that I fought to stay in it when I didn’t have it. I’ll put a little work in and see if I can go shoot a low one tomorrow and get right back in it.”
Mickelson started off his round well with a birdie on the first hole, a par four, 441-yarder. Mickelson also had birdies on holes five and six on the day. However, just two holes later Mickelson bogeyed another par four, this time only seven yards shorter at 434 yards. Nine holes later at the 12th hole, Mickelson also bogeyed another par four.
All of that put Mickelson in a tie for 81st.
It was also a rough day getting on the greens in regulation as he was only 13 of 18 of them in regulation. The one thing that saved his round was the fact that he was 2-for-2 when it came to sand saves.
The tournament continues tomorrow with the second round.
