It was gridlock on the opening day of the US PGA, where the leaderboard was backed up like Philly traffic. By the time it was all over, seven men were tied in the lead on three under par, and another 42 were within three shots of them. Altogether, a third of the field was within easy reach of the lead. It was record for a major championship, and they have been playing them since 1860. There are 16 major winners spread among them, including, ominously for everyone else, that man Scottie Scheffler. All the talk before the tournament was that it would be a turkey shoot, but it turned out to be one long tailback. The only thing missing was the traffic police.
Actually they had one of them, too, or something near enough. A rules official on the 1st tee gave the 27-year-old South African Garrick Higgo a two-shot penalty for arriving 30 seconds late from the practice green. He still shot a 69. The really odd thing was that in a field where even a man who dropped two shots because he missed his tee time managed to end the day in contention, a couple of the biggest names in the game wound up all but out of it.
Rory McIlroy finished on four over after scoring four straight bogeys on his last four holes for the first time in his major career. Asked to sum up his round in the moments after he had finished he offered a single-word verdict: “Shit.” Aronimink can do that to you. The course, which last hosted a major back in 1962, is laid out around a natural basin. It is all canted fairways and cambered greens, and the players spent most of the day tilting over the ball like they were playing on the deck of a listing ship in a heavy swell.
“I started missing fairways,” McIlroy said when he was asked to expand on his thoughts. “From there, it’s hard.” It was only a couple of days ago that he was insisting that the course didn’t require any particular strategy off the tee beyond “bash the driver down there and figure it out”. He was good enough to admit that he had got that one wrong, which he realised after his opening drive landed in such deep rough that he could only chop his next shot a hundred yards on along the fairway. “That lie,” he said, “was as bad as I’ve seen.”
He wasn’t the only one who suffered. Bryson DeChambeau finished six over. He did say recently that his top priority was to grow his YouTube following. All he needs now is a grabby title for the highlights package of his first round. “This CHANGES Everything! An expert reveals five mistakes most players STILL make!” maybe, or: “I SNEAKED into the PGA Championship… and THIS happened!” perhaps. Lowlights included an iron shot that hit the grandstand at the 17th, another that landed on the porch steps of the bar by the 2nd, a 30ft putt that rolled 60ft past the hole at the 11th.