Billy Mayfair, who tied for second in last year’s Boeing Classic, carded two eagles on Friday to take a share of the lead after the event’s first round in Snoqualmie, Wash.
Mayfair carded a 5-under-par 67 at The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge, leaving him level with Tim Petrovic, Scott Dunlap, Scott McCarron and South Korea’s K.J. Choi.
Billy Andrade, Steve Stricker, Brandt Jobe and Canada’s Steven Ames are tied for sixth at 4 under. Seven players, including Seattle native Fred Couples and Charles Schwab Cup leader Steven Alker of New Zealand, share 10th place at 3 under.
Mayfair eagled the par 5 opening hole but was back at level par through six holes. He birdied the seventh hole, added another eagle at the par-5 eighth and was mistake-free the rest of the way, tacking on birdies at No. 14 and No. 18.
Petrovic had six birdies, three bogeys and an eagle at No. 8, his next-to-last hole of the day.
“You always like to start good, but it’s always how you finish,” Petrovic said. “I just hit three perfect shots on 8, bombed it down there about 330 off the tee and had like a little 5-iron in there. It’s a tight little shot. Squeezed it in there, got it behind the pin, it bounced around and went in somehow.”
Dunlap was 1 under after an up-and-down front nine, but he added four birdies on a bogey-free back nine.
“(I) luckily stopped the bogey train and kept up with making birdie every third hole or so,” said Dunlap, the 2014 Boeing Classic champion. “Ended up being a good day. I’ve got decent memories of this place needless to say from a while back.”
McCarron was the only one of the co-leaders to complete a bogey-free round.
“I played pretty solid today,” he said. “I drove it in the fairway, hit a lot of greens, made a couple nice putts, and when I did miss a green, I hit some nice chips to get it up and down. It was kind of a stress-free 5 under, it felt pretty good out there today.”
Like Petrovic, Choi eagled the eighth hole and had six birdies and three bogeys.
Defending champion Rod Pampling of Australia is tied for 24th at 1 under.
–Field Level Media