To the fans who didn’t make the trip out to Cog Hill on Thursday, you missed some pretty good golf.
At one point, it appeared the players were dedicating birdies for every spectator in the gallery. “Hey Fred, that one’s for you.”
It was an ideal day for scoring, if not for watching. More than half the field (37 of 65 players) broke par during the first round of the BMW Championship.
Jonathan Byrd led the way with a 7-under 64. That gave him a one-shot lead over Justin Rose and Camilio Villegas and a two-shot edge over Stewart Cink, Troy Matteson and Pat Perez.
Lurking in the group at 67 was Tiger Woods, who is seeking his fourth title at Cog Hill. And that’s not a good omen for the field because every time Woods has shot in the 60s in a first round here, he has won the tournament.
Normally, Woods is followed by a huge mob, enabling most fans to see only the top of his head. Instead, Woods felt lonely early Thursday, although his galleries filled in later.
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“This is about what we see for the pro-am,” Woods said. “But today is the first round, which is so different.”
According to tournament director John Kaczkowski, there were an estimated 20,000 fans at Cog Hill on Thursday, down from the 34,000 who attended the first round for the 2006 Western Open, which was played in July.
Clearly, the crowds were hurt by the PGA Tour’s decision to move up the starting times more than two hours because of a poor weather forecast. The prediction of storms along with the earlier tee times undoubtedly kept people away.
Still, it wasn’t the atmosphere officials had hoped for the first day of the BMW Championship. Rose actually talked of the difficulty of having too few fans out there.
“Sometimes a couple of hundred [fans] is the hardest to play in front of because you tend to notice a lot more in that situation,” Rose said.
While the sky looked as if it were going to explode several times, rain didn’t come until 5:30 p.m., more than two hours after play had been completed. However, the threat of downpours compelled officials to play the round under lift-clean-and-place conditions. That opened the floodgates, so to speak.
“I don’t know why we went ball in hand today,” Woods said. “But as soon we did, you just knew the guys were going to tear it apart.”
Rose did most of the ripping early and he went five holes before he realized he could clean and replace his ball in the fairway. Obviously, it didn’t matter, because he played the front in 29 and then made birdies on 10 and 11 to go to 8-under through 11 holes. Suddenly, the magic round of 59 appeared to be in his grasp.
“I think it briefly came across my mind on the 11th hole, but I never really got excited about it from that point of view,” Rose said.
Sure enough, Rose struggled with the wind on the back 9 and settled for a 65.
Byrd was able to pass him with a round that included only one bogey. Here’s a tip for all you golfers at home: Byrd said the key was swinging easier with his driver.
“My caddie, my swing instructor, my mental coach, just constantly ingrain in me to swing 85 percent,” Byrd said. “But when I start to feel uncomfortable on the golf course, I just start swinging harder and harder. I’ve been doing a good job of getting away from that and swinging within myself. I think the best players do that, even Tiger. As hard as he hits it, he’s usually swinging within himself.”
Woods had it going at 6-under until he hit the seventh hole; he had started on the back nine.
A couple of bad wedges led to a double bogey.
With the exception of the blip, Steve Stricker, who played with Woods, was impressed with what he saw.
“Oh, he’s on,” Stricker said. “And he can putt. I can see where I need to work on my putter. He can really roll it.”
The BMW needs Woods to keep rolling his putter. Obviously, he is the one player who can divert some local attention from the Bears and Cubs this weekend.
As for Friday, the tee times have been pushed up again because bad weather is in the forecast. Woods starts his round at 9:28 a.m.
Come on out. You could have him all to yourself.
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