Johnson continues torrid pace of play
He has 6th straight round of 68 or less
ATLANTA — Dustin Johnson was in trouble from the start, just not for very long. The game feels easy for the U.S. Open champion, who began his bid for the FedEx Cup title Thursday with a 4-under 66 to share the lead at the Tour Championship.
Johnson had 165 yards from the sand and worried about getting it over the lip of the bunker. He hit 8-iron to 2 feet for birdie and was on his way to his sixth consecutive round at 68 or lower.
“It was a very nice shot to start the day,” Johnson said with a smile.
Hideki Matsuyama of Japan ran off three straight birdies early in his round and finished with a birdie on the par-5 18th — the nines have been switched at East Lake — for a 66, while Kevin Chappell joined them with a bogey-free round.
Johnson is coming off his third victory of the year at the BMW Championship two weeks ago, and there was no indication that anything has changed. He hit a reasonable amount of fairways (eight out of 14) considering the dry, fast conditions, and only once when he was out of position did he fail to save par.
He is the No. 1 seed in the FedEx Cup, and the top five seeds have to win only the Tour Championship to claim the $10 million FedEx Cup bonus. The top five were all among the dozen players who broke par in the opening round.
Jason Day, the world’s No. 1 player who hasn’t won in four months, dropped his only shot on the opening hole and was at 67, along with Kevin Kisner and Si Woo Kim.
“I’d like to give Dustin a good run for it,” Day said.
Jordan Spieth didn’t look like he would post anything near a 68 after he was 3 over through two holes. The defending FedEx Cup champion let his short game bail him out in a big way. Spieth holed three straight putts from the 30-foot range — one of them for par — and raced back into the mix on the back nine by holing a bunker shot for birdie right of the 13th green and finishing with a pair of 20-foot birdies.
“This is a course I feel very comfortable on,” Spieth said. “I feel if I play really solid golf here — and it doesn’t have to be perfect golf — I can shoot 8 under on this golf course. I have no doubt. It fits me really well.”
Also at 68 was Rory McIlroy, who had consecutive double bogeys toward the end of the front nine and pulled himself together with four straight birdies on the back.
WEB.COM TOUR: In Columbus, Ohio, South Korea’s Whee Kim shot a 6-under 65 Thursday to take the firstround lead in the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship .
Kim had seven birdies and a bogey on Ohio State’s Scarlet Course in the third of four events that will determine 25 PGA Tour cards.
Kevin Tway and Spain’s Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano shot 66. EUROPEAN PGA TOUR: In Bad Griesbach, Germany, Bernd Wiesberger shot nine birdies and one eagle to lead the European Open by two strokes with an 8-under 63 after a shortened opening day Thursday.
Renato Paratore of Italy was two shots adrift, while Denmark’s Lucas Bjerregaard, American Daniel Im, and England’s Steve Webster finished the day at 5 under.