Shane Lowry is eleven shots off the pace after the opening round of the FedEx Cup play-offs St Jude Championship at TPC Southwind.
Lowry carded a three-over 73 to languish in a share of 65th place but current leader Akshay Bhatia had a completely different day, carding a career low 62 to hit the front on eight-under.
Lowry just couldn’t get things going, especially on the greens. Despite starting steadily with a pair of opening pars and a birdie on the par-5 third, he wouldn’t card another birdie and lost momentum with back to back bogeys on the fifth and sixth holes.
Another brace of bogeys on 12 and 13 made it a very frustrating day for the Clara man in Memphis.
Leader Bhatia is one shot clear of Tommy Fleetwood and two ahead of Harry Hall, Justin Rose and Bud Cauley.
After posting a win and runner-up in each of the past two seasons, Bhatia hasn’t had a top-10 since a third-place finish at THE PLAYERS in March.
A cracked driver at Augusta, and a protracted search to find a replacement, was one reason for the struggles.
He arrived into the first leg of the playoffs ranking 45th in the FedEx Cup standings but put any stresses over rankings behind him as he fired seven birdies, an eagle and just one bogey.
The left hander finished with aplomb, eagling the par-5 16th and making birdies at 17 and 18.
“I haven’t done a great job. I’ve been looking at a lot of numbers that I don’t need to look at, obviously FedExCup, world ranking, and I’m still doing it, and I still catch myself doing it,” said Bhatia.
“But I’m just really trying to have a little more peace on the golf course. I think this game can consume your life, your happiness, and so I’m just trying to figure out ways to change that because I feel like I don’t really want to live my life based off of an unstable game. That’s going to drive me nuts. This whole year it has, so I’m just trying to be just a little more at ease with whatever I shoot.”
