It's tough to get too excited about the first day of a golf tournament, but the opening round of the BMW Championship was anything but a typical first day. Unfortunately, the Big 4 isn't playing as a foursome, but three of its members were paired together (Sorry, Rory) and boy were they making noise and having fun.
It started with Rickie Fowler's ridiculously lucky bank shot off Jordan Spieth during the group's seventh hole of the day:
Then Jason Day, who was already four under at the turn, holed out from a fairway bunker 80 yards away for eagle on the 10th hole:
And then Spieth topped them all. On the par-3 second (the group's 11 hole), he hit a 7-iron from 184 yards, and this happened:
These guys are, well, you know.
But Day would take back the headlines by Thursday evening. Birdies on 7 and 8 (his 17th and 18th) gave him an outside chance of shooting 59. Day arrived on the 405-yard par 4 needing an eagle and blasted a drive that just trickled into the right rough, but only left him with 44 yards to the hole. And then, the lightning horn blew. Mother Nature trying to ice the planet's hottest golfer.
"It feels like a practice round," Day said when asked about his game right now. "Like even if you hit a bad shot, it's going to be OK. It's hard to explain."
Storms rolled through the Chicago area forcing play to be suspended for the day. The first round will resume Friday at 7:30 a.m. CT with Day facing an unlikely, but not impossible shot at achieving golf's magic number.
Oddly enough, the PGA Tour's most recent 59 was shot by Jim Furyk -- who withdrew from a tournament for the first time since 1995 on Thursday -- in the first round the only other time Conway Farms hosted this event in 2013. No course has ever yielded two 59s on any of the major professional golf tours.
The way Day is going, would you bet against him?
UPDATE: Day's pitch came up eight feet short. He missed the birdie putt and settled for a 61 to take a four-shot lead and match the low round on the PGA Tour in 2015. Spieth birdied the final hole to shoot 65 and move into a tie for second place at the moment. Fowler wound up with a 69.
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