Cantlay holds onto Tour Championship lead
ATLANTA — The Catch Patrick Cantlay Sweepstakes has well and truly begun at East Lake. So much jostling for position and cutting in line behind the assigned Tour Championship leader Thursday. Just add some angry car horns and a few creative hand gestures, and you’d have an I285 off-ramp.
They all were in such neat rows entering the PGA Tour’s playoff finale and its eccentric staggered scoring system. Cantlay at 10 under by virtue of his points lead, a two-shot lead over the next lucky soul. With the other 28 players knowing their place and assigned their lane.
Cantlay will take a lead — still two strokes — into Friday’s second round, shooting a 3-under 67 in Round 1 to go 13 under for the tournament. And then it gets jumbled.
Shooting the day’s low round — 65, to go to 11 under overall — Jon Rahm took over the second spot from Tony Finau, who dropped all the way to eighth with his first-round 72. In this traffic, you snooze, you lose.
Former Georgia Bulldog Harris English made the most daring move of the day, scoring a hole-in-one on the waterpark ride that is No. 15 and canning birdies on the next two holes to shoot 66 and get to third at 8 under. And the crowd went wild. “I heard 200 ‘Go Dawgs’ from that tee to the green,” he said.
Viktor Hovland passed on the shoulder, swerved back into traffic, tailgated like he was in tow — where’s a cop when you need one? — and went all the way from a starting position of 13th to fifth by virtue of a 66 of his own.
The one player who held his ground was the one thought to be most reckless out here. Bryson DeChambeau started in third and in silent, no-comment third he still resides, having shot a come-from-behind 69 to stand with English at 8 under.
Let it be noted that in light of all the recent hubbub over fan behavior, the good people at East Lake were quite hospitable to the occasionally beleaguered DeChambeau. Nary a snarky peep all day. The course, however, seemed to be in a mood to mistreat him early.
No word yet whether PGA Tour officials considered ordering the second and third holes removed from the property after they inflicted backto-back bogeys upon him. The water of East Lake itself misbehaved badly, drowning DeChambeau’s tee ball at the 15th. And it wouldn’t be a surprise if the greenside bunker at No. 9 that suckered him in and short-sided him had been put on warning. But after a close of three consecutive birdies, DeChambeau and East Lake made amends.
Rahm established his intentions early, chipping in from 37 yards out after his approach from a fairway bunker landed short. (They were dancing the flamenco at No. 1, as fellow Spaniard Sergio Garcia chipped in from 160 yards for eagle). Then Rahm rolled a lovely 46-foot putt down a winding, tricky slope that did everything but fall in.
“I think it’s easy to just think of the chip-in, but I think the long putt on 2 helped as well,” Rahm said. “You get a chip-in, it’s a bonus. Then on 2, I leave myself not in the easiest spot – a long putt downhill with good 10 to 12 feet of break – and I almost make it with perfect pace. Knowing that I have the pace of the greens, it kind of gives me a little bit of a bonus feel.”