Rahm on course with 4-under 66
Spaniard attacks Colonial, sits shot behind leaders
Sergio Garcia won the first time he played Colonial Country Club.
Fellow Spaniard Jon Rahm is in position to pull off the same feat.
Rahm, the former amateur standout from Arizona State who won his first PGA Tour title in his 12th start as a professional this year in the Farmers Insurance Open, shot 4-under-par 66 in Thursday’s first round of the Dean & DeLuca Invitational in Fort Worth.
Playing alongside Garcia, Rahm, 22, took advantage of mild conditions before strong winds started to sweep across Colonial and made only one bogey against five birdies. Rahm trailed pacesetters Derek Fathauer, J.T. Poston and Kelly Kraft by one shot.
Joining Rahm at 66 were Graeme McDowell and Scott Brown.
Phil Mickelson, who won this championship in 2000 and 2008 but hasn’t played it since 2010, closed with three birdies and was in a large group at 67. Defending champion Jordan Spieth birdied his last two holes to shoot 70.
“I feel fortunate to have teed off in the morning,” said Rahm, who is ranked No. 12 in the world. “It was a well-rounded day. I felt very comfortable and very calm. That’s usually a good combination of feelings.”
Rahm was playing for the first time since he missed the secondary cut with a third-round 82 in The Players Championship two weeks ago. The round was his worst on Tour by seven shots.
Rahm was shaken by the round — “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said — but he quickly put it behind him and didn’t change anything ahead of the Dean & DeLuca. Even on the tight, tree-lined Colonial course where the consensus approach leans toward playing conservatively to avoid trouble, Rahm was back in attack mode with his best weapon — the driver. He was himself again and in his accustomed place on the first page of the leaderboard.
Rahm, who has six top-10s in 10 starts this year, used his driver 12 times.
“It’s an old school golf course, and usually I like those. We have quite a few of those back in Spain,” Rahm said. “I try to use (the driver) as much as possible, and rarely found myself out of the fairway. … It’s just the way I’ve been hitting the driver this year, there is always room to hit it. I’m comfortable enough to start doing that. There are many ways to play this course, and many different players that have won here, so this is the only effective way.”
Garcia isn’t going to argue with Rahm’s approach.
“He’s got a great overall game,” said Garcia, the reigning Masters champion who won at Colonial in 2001 when he was 21. “He can hit the ball far. He hits it quite straight for how far he hits it. His iron play is solid. His putting is really nice and chipping fairly good, too. It’s a good mix.”