Padraig Harrington shares the seventh spot in the FedEx St. Jude Classic
The three-time major winner Padraig Harrington carded a two-under par 68 in the opening round of the FedEx St. Jude Classic to share the seventh position on Thursday, June 7, 2012.
Harrington started his round on the back nine of the course and recorded two birdies to go two-under.
However, his front-nine performance was not as consistent as it was on the back nine. He recorded a birdie along with a bogey to settle two strokes behind the leaders, Jeff Maggert and John Merrick.
According to him, he was expecting a better score on the opening day at the TPC Southwind in Memphis.
However, the quickness of the greens made it difficult for the players to make putts, hindering them from scoring low. Overall, there were only 27 players who scored under par.
“I thought the scoring would be a little bit better,” he said. “I'm trying to figure out why it wasn't. Greens are a little quicker maybe than they have been in the practice rounds and have to dry out”.
He told that the winds also played an important role in adding difficulty to the course and affected the calculations made by the players while making the drives.
“It was windy from early on,” he said. “I certainly hit it well off the tee, chipped, I putted well, but, you know, I didn't hit my wedges as well as I would have liked. I got distracted a number of times with the wind. Just couldn't commit on a lot of the
shots because it was swirling into trees and making a lot of noise. Probably wasn't affecting the shots as much as we were worrying about, anyway”.
By and large, he is happy to post a reasonably good score on the leaderboard and confident to improve his score in the upcoming rounds.
In the meantime, the world number two Rory McIlroy, who missed the cut in the last three tournaments, also shared the seventh spot, along with 10 other players.
McIlroy is playing the event with an aim to get his form back prior to the start of the US Open, scheduled for the next week.
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