Camilo Villegas, Matt Wallace tied for lead at the PGA's RSM Classic

Moving on from a devastating summer of losing his child, Camilo Villegas made a 10-foot birdie putt on his final hole Thursday for a 6-under 64 and a share of the lead with Matt Wallace in the RSM Classic on St. Simons Island, Ga.

Villegas and Wallace each finished on the Seaside course at Sea Island with big putts. Villegas capped off a bogey-free round on the ninth hole for his lowest score on the PGA Tour in four years. Wallace hit into a hazard on the 18th and saved par with a 30-foot putt.

They were a shot ahead of eight players, a group that included Sea Island resident Patton Kizzire and Robert Streb, who won his only PGA Tour title at Sea Island five years ago. They each had 5-under 67 on the Plantation course, which played about three-quarters of a shot harder.

Villegas was trying to return from a shoulder injury that kept him out all of 2019 when he and wife learned early this year their 2-year-old daughter, Mia, had tumors developing on her brain and spine. She was going through chemotherapy when she died in July.

He's trying to move on and hang on to memories, and he had one immediately while warming up with his brother, Manny, working as his caddie.

“Got on the range and see a little rainbow out there. I start thinking about Mia and said, ‘Hey, let's have a good one.' Nice to have Manny on the bag and yes, it was a good ball-striking round, it was a great putting round. I was pretty free all day.”

Villegas, a 38-year-old from Colombia, is a four-time winner on the PGA Tour, including the last two FedEx Cup playoff events in 2008. He has missed the cut in three of his five events of the new PGA Tour season, which began a little more than a month after his daughter died.

Wallace tied for 46th last week at the Masters, and then learned on his way to Sea Island about three hours away that his caddie, Dave McNealy, tested positive for the coronavirus. Wallace tested negative, but he was in need of a caddie. With two courses in the rotation he didn't know, he decided on a local caddie named Jeffrey Cammon.

Sungjae Im, a runner-up at the Masters, began his round at Plantation with double bogey and brought it back to even-par 72.