Nick Watney grabs lead at Players
Phil Mickelson hit a shot onto the green and it rolled into the water. Ben Crane hit a shot over an island and it wound up on dry land. Tiger Woodsplayed the shortest tournament of his career.
Even on a relatively calm day, there’s no predicting what might happen at The Players Championship.
The strangest sight of all Thursday was Woods, limping off the ninth green and heading to the parking lot, but not before making a detour to a fitness trailer with a sign painted on the side that said, “Is knee pain holding you back?”
Nine holes into this first tournament since the Masters — where Woods said he had a “minor injury” to his left knee and Achilles — he couldn’t go on. He withdrew after a 42 on the front nine, his highest 9-hole score ever at the TPC Sawgrass.
“I’m having a hard time walking,” he said.
Nick Watney and so many others made it look easy, even though it rarely is on this crazy course.
One week after he missed the cut for the first time in nearly a year, Watney opened with an 8-under 64 for a one-shot lead over Lucas Glover. Not only was it Watney’s best score at Sawgrass by four shots, he had a double bogey early in his round.
“Last week in Charlotte, I got off to a bad start and I never really righted the ship,” Watney said. “So today to have a bad hole like that and still play a good round is a rewarding feeling, just because I didn’t let it affect the rest of my day.”
Glover atop the leaderboard was not unusual, not after he won last week at the Wells Fargo Championship to end a two-year drought since his U.S. Open title. He played the par-5 16th and the par-3 17th in eight shots, but not the way he would have thought. He hit into the water on the 16th to make bogey on the easiest hole at Sawgrass, then knocked in a 20-foot birdie on the island-green 17th.
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