The drive that’s become the talk of the PGA Tour in recent weeks only went 303 yards, but the number didn’t tell the full story. It was the visual, of Bryson DeChambeau hitting directly into the wind, and landing his ball more than 35 yards past the ball of Rickie Fowler.
“He made Rickie look like a damn child,” Jack Sammons joked as he surveyed this scene.
The chairman of the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational had ventured out to the farthest corner of TPC Southwind just to get a glimpse of DeChambeau uncorking a drive full throttle on one of the few holes here where that’s the proper strategy.
But while everyone gawked at DeChambeau’s long ball, or laughed at him for claiming he needed relief from fire ants, or wondered what he was listening to in the ear buds he had on course, “a damn child” proved once again that this tournament is rarely decided by a golfer’s length off the tee.
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Perhaps that’s why the first round of the first fan-less WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational became a showcase for what sets this tournament apart from a normal PGA event. The fields are stacked. Almost as stacked as a major championship. This year, the top eight golfers in the world are here, and 45 of the top 50.
And so the leaderboard, at least after the first round, set the stage for a memorable few days in Memphis.
The defending champion (Brooks Koepka) picked up where he left off a year ago with an 8-under 62. Two shots behind him is the golfer with perhaps the most television advertisements on the PGA Tour (Fowler).
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Lurking a few shots behind them is the 50-year-old fan favorite who’s become Memphis’ biggest cheerleader (Phil Mickelson), a two-time champion on this course and former world No. 1 (Dustin Johnson), another former world No. 1 (Justin Thomas) and the guy who can hit it a country mile off the tee (DeChambeau).
It was yet another reminder that this year’s tournament can still be memorable, even if the memories won’t be quite the same with no galleries to help make them. It was a reminder of how far this tournament has come in a little over a decade, since it nearly went under after its former title sponsor, Stanford Financial Group, went belly up due to fraud charges.
“We were struggling to attract big-time players back then,” Sammons said. “I’d have Nick Vergos send guys Rendezvous ribs and I’d send keys to the city. If you had told me then we’d have all eight of the top eight in the world, I would’ve thought you’re living in a dream.”
But the dream came true, and the stars might be aligning again. We got Koepka vs. Rory McIlroy last year, and this year Koepka might be crafting an even better story.
That Koepka picked up where he left off was surprising only because he hadn’t looked like the same golfer as a year ago while dealing with a knee injury recently. He missed the cut in two of his last three events and finished 12-over at The Memorial in his most recent start two weeks ago.
But he was the last golfer on the course Tuesday and Wednesday, often surrounded by two coaches, working out the kinks. Koepka said he changed his putting stroke Wednesday.
So it appears after the first round that returning to Memphis for 18 holes at TPC Southwind could be better for his knee than the stem cell therapy he’s been receiving.
And then there was Fowler, who missed the cut during his last appearance in Memphis in the 2017 FedEx St. Jude Classic. He shot an 81 in the first round of The Memorial two weeks ago and missed the cut there, too.
He finished Thursday ranked 45th in strokes gained off the tee, but nobody in this 78-golfer field was better than him tee to green in the first round. The “damn child” played like a man among boys.
“This golf course, it will pick you apart if you’re not hitting the ball where and how far and the correct line,” Fowler said. “It is very satisfying to go out on a golf course like this and get off to a good solid start.”
That’s why so many of the world’s best golfers, whether they’ve been coming to TPC Southwind for years or they just started coming a year ago when this became a WGC event, rave about the place. That’s why they’re going to keep coming back for years to come.
In the midst of a pandemic that’s forced most of Memphis to watch their showcase golf event on television, at least we can take solace in that.
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