Everyone is talking about mud balls after the first round of the PGA Championship.
Scottie Scheffler sent the golf world into a spin with his press conference rant about a mud ball that he believes led to a double bogey on the 16th, but a great of the game thinks the world No.1 and others need to suck it up.
A surprise leader emerged as Jhonattan Vegas reeled off five birdies in his last six holes as the sun was setting on Quail Hollow to grab a two-shot lead from Australia’s Cam Davis and Ryan Gerard.
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There was a mixed bag of result among the sport’s biggest names with Rory McIlroy all but playing his way out of making it back-to-back major championships after claiming his elusive green jacket at Augusta National last month.
LEADERBOARD: All the first round scores
Another five-time major winner had a disappointing outing, while a past PGA champion hurt his chances with a baffling mistake at the last.
Here are all the talking points from the opening round of the second men’s major of the year.
‘THEY FORGET SOMETIMES’: STARS CALLED OUT
Scottie Scheffler’s comments sparked much debate after the tournament officials decided not to implement preferred lies.
Quail Hollow was almost under water earlier in the week due to heavy rains, which has made for a soft golf course.
During a typical PGA Tour event, it would be expected the players would be able to lift, clean and place their ball on the fairway in such conditions.
But in major championships, the rule is rarely adopted as it is seen in some quarters as messing with the integrity of the game.
Aaron Rai, who is three shots off the lead, professed that he likes the play it as it lies mentally that is in place, but Scheffler’s remarks received strong support from defending champion Xander Schauffele.
The world No.3 was playing in the same group as Scheffler and witnessed first hand when his playing partner’s approach from the fairway into the 16th green hooked left into the water as mud emerged from the divot created.
But former European Ryder Cup winning captain Paul McGinley believes such unfortunate instances are simply part and parcel of the game.
The Irishman suggested that the players can have selected memories with bad breaks often sticking in the mind, rather than the lucky ones.
“Golf’s not a game of perfect, and that’s where I’m at with it now,” McGinley said on Live from the PGA Championship.
“The players get so many good breaks in this game.
“They get relief from grandstands. They get relief from sprinkler heads, sometimes even when they’re in the rough – we saw Bob McIntyre do that when he went onto win last year (at the Scottish Open).
“They get line of sight sometimes when they’re in heavy rough and they’re able to move it away from trees and get a line in.
“This is a case of maybe not getting a good break.
“But when you don’t get a good break in golf, it’s about how you deal with it.
“Let’s just take the example of 16 today, and I was thinking about it afterwards.
“Say, for example, Scottie, or Xander, or anybody, hit it into a divot on the 16th hole. What would they do?
“They would say, ‘oh, bad break’.
“So, you take out a club less. Put it back in your stance, you drive down on top of it, you gouge it out and you chop it to the front of the green.
“You play the lie that you had. You cultivated a shot based on the lie that you had.
“So, when you’re down there today and you’re on the fairway and you’re not in a divot, but you have a mud ball, it’s in play.
“That’s a time to adapt.
“(Jack) Nicklaus always said that golf’s a game of adaptation to the situations.
“I know that’s cold. I know as a player I probably didn’t see it that way,” McGinley added.
“Sitting at the desk, it’s a lot easier to do but that’s how I see it.
“Golf is a game that you’ve got to accept bad breaks and professional golfers, in particular, get so many good breaks nowadays – bouncing it off stands, we saw the ladies major a couple of weeks ago with a stand right behind the green and the players purposely hit it into the stand.
“They forget sometimes about how many good things happen for them.”
Theories are abound about mud balls.
Players know that the ball will comes out with less spin than usual, making it harder to stop.
One of the most popular beliefs is that if there is mud on the right side of the golf ball, it goes left. And if there is mud on the left side of the golf ball, it goes right.
Former professional and commentator Brandel Chamblee is unsure if that is true, but he believes a mud call is similar to how pitchers deceive batters in baseball.
“It’s not unlike a knuckle ball in baseball,” Chamblee said.
“Catchers use a bigger mit, it perplexes the catchers.
“They don’t know where it’s going. Batters don’t where it’s going.
“We start to try to figure out why golfers are so frustrated, we’re all trying to figure out where these things are going.
“You see wild mistakes out there because generally speaking, players don’t know where it’s going.”
Davis surges into lead at Quail Hollow | 02:53
RORY NEEDS TO RE-WRITE RECORDS
Rory McIlroy is facing an uphill battle to simply make the cut, let alone add a third Wanamaker Trophy to his collection.
The Masters champion is tied for 98th after a three-over par first round of 74, and history is not in his favour.
No one has come from further back after the first round to win the PGA Championship in the last 16 years than Y.E.Yang (2009), Martin Kaymer (2010) and Justin Thomas (2017) being tied 44th after 18 holes.
The furthest back any major winner has been after the first round was Steve Jones’ tied 84th at the 1996 US Open.
“If Rory comes back and wins, this would be unprecedented,” Brandel Chamblee said.
Playing alongside Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele, the Northern Irishman battled, making two birdies, three bogeys and a double bogey.
The poor showing came as a shock after McIlroy was widely believed to be in the form of his life, and tipped to dominate the majors now that the burden of the career grand slam and the green jacket was unshackled from his ankles.
Adding to the confidence was that McIlroy has won four times previously at Quail Hollow during the annual PGA stop in North Carolina.
But McIlroy’s former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley believes all those factors have flown out the window, and parallels to his early stumble at Augusta cannot be drawn.
“Look, he finished with two double bogeys in the last four holes in the first round at Augusta National, and he reset and he came back,” McGinley said.
“But that was a different story.
“He played fantastically that day, today he played really poorly.
“He didn’t talk to the press afterwards.
“Is he mad? Is he frustrated? Is he going to come back with a bit of a pointy elbow on him?
“That’s what I’m interested to see tomorrow.
“I thought it was going to be difficult for him to come out of that euphoric state into a focused, driven state and we didn’t see it today.
“Are we going to see it tomorrow?”
One of the key features of McIlroy’s struggles was his poor driving.
He hit just four fairways to be ranked tied 150th when there are 156 players in the field.
He regularly hooked his tee shots left, and was ranked 85th for strokes gained off the tee.
Chamblee believes he has never seen McIlroy be so faulty with driver in hand.
“This is some of the worst drives I think I’ve ever seen him hit,” he said.
“To me, looks like he’s dropping a little bit to the inside, ever so slightly.
“Club, just doesn’t look like it’s in the same spot at the top. It’s cutting across the line, it’s coming inside and I think he’s getting stuck hitting it on the toe a little bit.
“And the cousin of that, of course, is the flare out to the right with the irons, which he did a number of times today.”
But digging deeper, Chamblee believes McIlroy’s woes began at the Truist Championship at Philadelphia Cricket Club.
The general consensus was that that his top ten finish was ideal preparation for a shot at winning a second successive major championship, but the warning signs with the big stick were prevalent.
“Even going back to last week, you could kind of see this happening,” Chamblee said.
“There was talk of him putting a new driver in the bag this week, and everyone who followed him said he drove it great.
“But the way he played last week off of the tee, it’s interesting.
“He was looking at the face of his driver after hitting one right on 17 (during the second round), like ‘that was weird, felt weird’.
“Final round, he was all over the place. He only hit four fairways on Saturday and then on Sunday, he only hit five fairways.
“Day two, he was looking at the face. Day four, he was trying to figure out is he out of sync?
“He certainly was off the tee.
“I’m sure he’d give himself a C+ or B- on the week, and he still finished in the top ten, finished seventh.
“But if you look at the strokes gained off the tee (+0.06 in the third round and +0.99 in the fourth), as far as he hits it, yeah, it’s still to the good but nowhere near what he has been.”
‘PHENOMENAL STORY’: LEADER’S INCREDIBLE JOURNEY
No one saw Jhonattan Vegas coming.
As it appeared Australia’s Cam Davis and American Ryan Gerard would hold the overnight lead at -5, Vegas came from the clouds.
He went on a barnstorming run, birding five of his last six holes to jump to -7 and a two-shot lead.
The 40-year-old Venezuelan is a four-time PGA Tour winner, who burst onto the scene back in 2011 when he won the Bob Hope Classic in a playoff in just his second start since earning his card.
During that playoff, Vegas hooked a shot into the water but brushed off that setback to still go onto defeat Bill Haas and Gary Woodland.
He has not reached the heights many expected after that showing, with his best result in a major coming at this event in 2016 when he finished T22 at Baltusrol Golf Club, New Jersey.
But the first round at Quail Hollow was a reminder of his remarkable journey from humble beginnings, and talent.
Vegas, who was playing alongside Australia’s Elvis Smylie as tournament organisers clearly had a sense of humour when arranging the tee times, rattled off nine birdies in an eye-catching display.
Brandel Chamblee recalled on Live from the PGA Championship, how Vegas first got to the PGA Tour.
“It is a phenomenal story,” Chamblee said.
“From Venezuela with all the political upheaval there and difficulties.
“He was able to get to Houston (at the University of Texas) and a fella by the name of Franci Betancourt took him under his wing, took him in, gave him a place to live.
“He famously went back on a trip to get his family and come back.
“It’s been a heck of story.
“He’s a world class driver of the golf ball.
“He’s got some other areas of his game that are not quite there.
“He’s never been a great chipper of the ball. He’s never been a great putter of the ball.
“But it’s come together beautifully, a handful of times throughout his career and he’s had a nice career.”
‘WORST STRETCH OF HIS PROFESSIONAL CAREER’: BROOKS’ BATTLES
One shot worse than Rory McIlroy was one of his long-time rivals Brooks Koepka.
The three-time PGA champion signed off on a +4 round of 75 that included a terrible bogey-double bogey-bogey-bogey stretch from holes 18 to three – he teed off on ten.
Similar to McIlroy, Koepka hit five fairways and struggled to find any sort of rhythm as he stares down the barrel of missing the cut for a second straight major.
“Since he won the PGA a few years ago, he’s had the worst stretch of his professional career in the major championships,” Brandel Chamblee said.
“That stretch continued today. Hit just seven of 18 greens.”
Koepka’s best result in a major since his 2023 PGA triumph at Oak Hill, is tied 17th at the US Open in the same year.
Last year, he made the cut at all four majors but went no better than tied 26th at the PGA and US Open.
The American’s former arch nemesis Bryson DeChambeau delivered a mixed round with an even par effort that keeps in the hunt.
Koepka’s fellow LIV star produced one of the highlights of the day with a near hole-in-one at the par 3 17th.
But three bogeys undid his good work, to finish the day where he started despite being ranked fifth for strokes gained off the tee, and first for driving distance with the longest drive of the day, a 362-yard bomb.
“Bryson was Bryson today,” Paul McGinley said.
“He didn’t miss a putt inside ten feet today.
“A bit like we saw at The Masters, some great stuff and some poor stuff from Bryson.”
‘CRAZY SHOT TO TAKE ON’: FORMER CHAMP’S COSTLY ERROR
Collin Morikawa was left to rue an uncharacteristic mistake at the 18th, the final hole of his round.
The 2020 PGA champion hit his drive right behind a tree at the last leg of the dreaded three finishing holes, dubbed ‘The Green Mile’, and decided to get overly aggressive with his second shot.
Morikawa attempted a miracle massive slice around the tee, out of the rough, but proceeded to merely dump his ball in the creek that runs along the left hand side of the 496-yard par 4.
He made double bogey as a result to drop back to -1, six shots off the lead.
Paul McGinley picked the American as his favourite to win the tournament in the build up, and he along with fellow Live from the PGA Championship panellist Brandel Chamblee were left baffled by the Morikawa’s thinking on 18.
“He’s too good of a player not to have won so far (this year),” McGinley said.
“I think it’s only a matter of time before he does it.
“I think there’s a big premium coming from fairways this week and he’s good at that.
“It was a crazy shot to take on.”
“It really was, wasn’t it?” Chamblee added.
“He really had nowhere to go,” McGinley added.
“Trying to move the ball out of the rough is a very difficult thing to do.”
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One shot better than Morikawa is Viktor Hovland.
The Norwegian has made regular complaints about his swing this year, but seemingly found his groove in his round of 69 that included five birdies.
“He’s had a bizarre year,” Chamblee said.
“One top ten and it was a win.
“Continues to struggle a little bit. Soft conditions made it a little easier.
“He’s got the golf swing down but chipping has still been a little bit of a problem.
“Although, he did have a nice one (at 16) a little bump and run. Remember him chipping in at the Ryder Cup?”
Another PGA Tour star who dazzled with a chip-in at 16 was Justin Thomas.
The champion that last time this event was played at Quail Hollow in 2017, Thomas clawed his way back to +2 with a hat-trick of birdies at 13, 15 and 16 after a front nine 39.
“He got a lousy start and he rallied a bit during the round, and he lost it again towards the end,” McGinley said.
“Hit four fairways and four greens in regulation.”
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