Bridgestone Invitational, Furyk Flies into the lead.
Jim Furyk/Shamus/Getty Images
Jim Furyk fired himself into the first round lead at Firestone Golf and Country Club in the Bridgestone Invitational with seven birdies and an eagle for a 7-under 63, and a two shot lead. Jim said he had to stop concentrating on being mechanically orientated, just play some golf;
“I think more than anything I needed a little time to clear my head. It wasn’t anything that was going wrong, but why I wasn’t playing better. I just felt like I needed to come in here and quit concentrating on trying to be so mechanically sound and just go play some golf and try to score and get the ball in the hole a little bit. It worked today. I did a lot better job of scoring. It’s been a while since I made seven birdies and an eagle in a round, so it was a lot of fun.”
Firestone always has a lot of run on the fairways when the conditions are good, and today was no exception, with the big boys getting over 400 yards. When Jim was told was he had hit seven drives over 300 yards, he said;
” Thats it ! I never crack the top 150 in driving distance on Tour. If all of a sudden, out of all the guys that played today, I was 30th in today’s field, I would say I was a lot longer than normal. But if I end up being; was there 80 guys in the field, 78? If I was 63rd today, I really wouldn’t worry about it. It was hot, the ball is going pretty far and the ground is quite firm. Statistically, it’ll probably look pretty good.”
Jim actually ended the day in 59th in driving distance.
Lee Slattery of England is in second place after his -5 under par 65 round edged him one shot clear of a group of six players on -4 under par. These include Bubba Watson and world number one Luke Donald.
Strangely, in the easy running conditions only 30 out of the 78 players who started the day manged to finish under par. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy finished at even par, while Adam Scott and Phil Mickelson were at +1. Ernie Els seems to have sunk back to where he was before The Open, he ended his day at +3 over par.
Tiger sarcastically remarked;
“I think I averaged about four putts per hole, so it was a great day on the greens. I was 3-under par. I mean, that’s not that bad, at the time I was three back of the lead and hadn’t made a thing. I thought that was a good sign. Unfortunately, finished awful and here we are.”
