Steve Stricker and Harrison Frazar are tied for the lead at 5-under 65 after one round of the Kaulig Companies Championship, the fourth major of the PGA Tour Champions season, on Thursday in Akron, Ohio.
Stricker, who won two majors in May and has four tournament victories overall this season, is attempting to run away with the Charles Schwab Cup title. His round Thursday featured an eagle, four birdies and a single bogey.
Formerly known as the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship, the annual event at Firestone Country Club produced a leaderboard full of recognizable names in the first round.
Stewart Cink is alone in third after a 4-under 66. South Korean major champion Y.E. Yang is tied for fourth with Germany’s Alex Cejka, a two-time senior major winner. Former World No. 1 Ernie Els of South Africa shot a 2-under 68, and John Daly is not far back in a tie for 12th at even-par 70.
For now, they’re all looking up at Stricker and Frazar, a 51-year-old vet whose last professional victory came in 2011.
Stricker went out on the back nine and birdied Nos. 10 and 13. The eagle came at the par-5, 526-yard second hole, where his hybrid approach rolled to just a few feet of the pin.
More important to Stricker than the holes he scored on were the holes he scrambled to save par.
“It was a combination of everything, right, and this is what this course makes you do,” said Stricker, who won this event in 2021. “You have to scramble going around here, take advantage of the good shots that you have. Tough to get in the fairway at times, and when you don’t, you’re scrambling to just to make a par, try to get it on the green. The rough isn’t horrible so you can play out of it, but it doesn’t lend itself to being able to attack a pin from the rough.”
Frazar also started on the back nine, but his big move came at the turn when he birdied Nos. 1, 2 and 3.
“Sometimes you’re not as far off as you think you are,” Frazar said, “but like I said, attitude was getting in the way more than anything. Just trying to stay level.”
Cink turned 50 in May and just began playing the PGA Tour Champions. This was his second start; in his first, the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, he shot four rounds in the 60s for third place.
After a 1-over 36 on the back nine, Cink rolled in five birdies on the front for a 5-under 30.
“I wasn’t really getting any results on my opening nine,” Cink said. “I had two three-putts and just a lot of grazed edges. I was playing OK. Then on the back I made about a 20-footer on the first hole with a big break. You know, the kind of putts that you don’t expect to make. From then on out, the hole looked bigger and it just felt more relaxing.”
Defending champion Jerry Kelly opened with a 1-over 71, as did Germany’s Bernhard Langer, who won the U.S. Senior Open earlier this month to become the winningest player in tour history (46 titles).
–Field Level Media