Day, Todd share lead at PGA Championship

SAN FRANCISCO: Australia’s Jason Day shot a bogey-free five-under-par 65 to take a share of the lead Thursday in the opening round of the PGA Championship, the first major of the pandemic-interrupted season.

The 2015 PGA champion Day rolled in five birdies for a one-shot cushion with co-leader Brendon Todd atop a star-studded crowded leaderboard at the TPC Harding Park course in San Francisco.

Day and Todd are just in front of a group of nine players that includes four former major champions, including two-time defending PGA champ Brooks Koepka and Germany’s Martin Kaymer. The other two former major winners are Zach Johnson and England’s Justin Rose.

Xander Schauffele, Bud Cauley, Scottie Scheffler, France’s Mike Lorenzo-Vera, and Brendan Steele are also at four-under 66. The first PGA Championship on the US west coast since 1988 is being contested without spectators after the season was shutdown for three months due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

But the relatively muted atmosphere proved no hindrance to Day, who is coming off a string of top ten finishes. “I feel like the momentum that I’ve had over the last three starts has kind of seeped into this week,” said Day.

“The funny thing is that every day I’m excited to go back to the golf course and play, whereas before I was struggling to get up and going. “The game is slowly coming around, the confidence is coming around because I’m starting to see the results.”

Todd, who already has two PGA Tour wins this season, had eight birdies as he was part of the afternoon wave which had to battle more difficult weather conditions. “I did a great job just scraping it around and giving myself a chance to shoot a good nine coming in,” Todd said of his five under 65.

Meanwhile Koepka, who is chasing history by trying to become the first three-peat PGA major winner in almost a century, once again demonstrated his ability to raise his game on the biggest stages. The American got on a roll at last week’s WGC-FedEx St. Jude event in Memphis and carried it over to this tournament.