CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Tommy Fleetwood took his lickings the first two times he played tournaments at Quail Hollow Club. But on a sun-drenched Thursday, Fleetwood finally figured this parkland beauty out, finishing birdie-birdie to shoot a bogey-free 6-under 65 and claim the first-round lead at the Wells Fargo Championship.
“You have days like today,” Fleetwood said. “There are plenty of players that shoot great rounds around here. It’s such a beautiful golf course and it’s a pleasure to play, it really, really is, but you just have to play well and that’s all there is to it. I enjoy the challenge, I loved playing today and having a score going and playing like that. I’m looking forward to whatever the week holds. It’s a great course to come and play, but it can just beat you up at times and today was my turn.”
Fleetwood hinted at the tough times, which included a T-61 at the 2017 PGA Championship and a missed cut at this event in 2018. The Englishman started to figure out Quail Hollow’s intricacies in 2021, finishing T-14.
“You can make it as daunting or as simple as you want to make it,” Fleetwood explained.
As for what makes Quail such a tricky old bird? “The scorable holes can actually still kick you,” he said.
Fleetwood, 32, reeled off six straight pars to start the round before jumping into red figures with an eight-foot eagle at No. 7. He tacked on a short birdie at eight and added three more circles to the card on the back nine, including playing Quail Hollow’s vaunted Green Mile – Nos. 16-18 – in 2 under. After driving into the right fairway at 18, he hit his self-proclaimed shot of the day, sticking his approach from 181 yards to seven feet.
“You never know when you’re one swing away from making a birdie,” he said. “There’s good shots out there and you have to always be looking for them and you always have to feel like you can hit one of those. Whether you do or not is a different story, but believing you can is the first part.”
Fleetwood leads by one over five golfers, including Xander Schauffele, who recorded his lowest score in 13 career rounds at Quail Hollow and K.H. Lee, who carded a 66 in the first round for the third straight year.
Here are four more takeaways from the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship.
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Streelman’s good vibes
Kevin Streelman has struggled this season, but he entered this week with some positive vibes. For starters, he’s staying this week with Paul Tucker, a former teammate of Streelman’s at Duke and the best man in his wedding. Then his parents, who live about an hour and a half west of Charlotte, drove over to watch him play in Wednesday’s pro-am. It marked the first time they had seen him play since the global pandemic began in March 2020.
“I don’t know how many more times they’ll get to watch me play golf,” he said of his parents, who are 80. “They taught me the game 36 years ago, so it’s pretty special to me and my family and for them to be out watching me play golf.”
Streelman, who is in his 16th year on Tour, shot a 5-under 66 on Thursday, his lowest score in 35 career rounds at the Wells Fargo Championship. He entered the week ranked 136th in the FedEx Cup standings and hasn’t recorded a top-10 finish this season. But he resumed working with his old coach Jim Suttie and got some short game help from retired tour pro Brett Rumsford.
“He was always an absolute freak with the wedges, like probably the best I’ve ever seen, more of a savant,” Streelman said. “He actually came over from Australia for five days with me this last December and just some simple ideas and philosophies, but I kind of really took those to heart.”
Streelman holed a bunker shot at the difficult 16th hole, the last of his six birdies on the day. But he credited his irons being dialed in as the key to his round. A few nagging injuries, especially to his neck, have had him tweaking his problem. Spending time with longtime coach Jim Suttie and his protégé, Jake Thurm, has helped Streelman get back to basics.
“I probably have a tendency to look too much at YouTube videos or Instagram, all these perfect swing posts and stuff. But I love it, too. I love the search, as I think a lot of us golfers do. But I think it’s important to know your fundamentals, your tendencies, write them down. As I tell kids as I’m talking to them, like know what makes you you and what makes you great great, and when you’re not so great, what do you need to go back to,” he said. “So that’s kind of the process I’ve been into is just going back to some things that have worked really well for me in the past.”
Boring golf for Moore
If you had Taylor Moore being tied with defending FedEx Cup champion Rory McIlroy in this season’s FedEx Cup standings as the calendar turned to May, well, please share your pick for the Kentucky Derby on Saturday.
But that happens to be the case. Moore and McIlroy both have 1,010 points, which is tied for 10th in the season-long points race.
Moore reeled off six birdies and one bogey on Thursday in his debut at Quail Hollow to card a 5-under 66 in the first round of the Wells Fargo Championship.
Moore, who won the Valspar Championship in March, has made six straight cuts and finished T-4 at the Zurich Classic two weeks ago. What’s been the secret to his recent success?
“I’m just really doing the same things. Josh Gregory, my coach, and I really just talk about staying boring and just doing what we do, sticking to our plan and doing the little stuff, little things that we do day in and day out,” Moore explained.
Boring golf works, especially when you hole over 100 feet of putts like Moore did on Thursday, including a 27-foot birdie putt at the first. He ranked fourth in the field of 156 in Strokes Gained: Putting, gaining nearly three strokes on the field. Moore’s confidence is on the rise, too.
“Anytime you win out here it’s just a little validation to yourself that not only can you compete out here, but you can hoist a trophy,” he said. “Yeah, just carrying over that momentum from Valspar and some good play early in the season and it’s definitely nice to see it’s still going.”
Cantlay and LaCava’s “easy transition”
One day into his new job, Joe LaCava is finding out why Tiger Woods told him, “You’d be crazy not to take the job.”
On Thursday, LaCava, 59, began his latest caddying gig on the bag of world No. 4 Patrick Cantlay, who fired a 4-under 67 (T-7) in the opening round.
“Played really well today,” Cantlay said. “The course was gettable on my front nine, although I kind of finished with a flurry there with the eagle and the birdie on 7 and 8.”
Cantlay, who won both the FedEx Cup and was named PGA Tour Player of the Year in 2021, hired LaCava to take over his bag at the suggestion of World Golf Hall of Fame member Fred Couples, who employed LaCava when he won the 1992 Masters and for more than two decades.
“Fred’s just spoke so highly of him not just as a caddie but as a friend, that he’s just a great dude,” Cantlay said. “I trust Fred a lot, he’s a good friend of mine and I’ve gotten pretty close to him over the years, so when he says something like that, I know he keeps a tight circle, he means it.”
LaCava most recently had been Woods’ sidekick for 11 official wins and 12 in all, including the 2019 Masters. With Woods sidelined for the foreseeable future after undergoing ankle fusion surgery, LaCava was available for work. He had received offers to pick up a bag for other players before but always remained loyal to Woods. He and Cantlay have worked together before during the 2021 Northern Trust when Cantlay’s former caddie, Matt Minister, missed time due to COVID-19.
LaCava told Sports Illustrated, he’d be with Cantlay, “As long as Patrick will have me going forward. I’m saying this kiddingly, if (Woods) could physically carry his own bag, he could win. I think he’s fine without me. We’ll miss each other with the friendship and not seeing each other as we normally would.”
Cantlay described working with LaCava in the first round as “a pretty easy transition,” adding, “I felt like I needed a change and it just seemed to work.”
Cantlay, 31, finished with a flourish, taking advantage of benign conditions on a Chamber of Commerce day to make a 26-foot eagle at No. 7 and an eight-foot birdie at No. 8 thanks to a helpful hand from LaCava.
“He had a really good read on eight and made a tricky putt there up the hill,” Cantlay said.
That’s not all he did. LaCava, who is a devoted sports fan, also began indoctrinating Cantlay into the cult of New York sports. Asked if LaCava had converted him into supporting the Giants, Rangers or Yankees, Cantlay smiled and said, “Not yet. He’s working on Yankees fan, though. He’s working on me.”
Birthday boy
Rory McIlroy celebrated his birthday on Thursday for the 11th time in Charlotte. Good thing he likes the Queen City, and in particular, Quail Hollow.
“I feel relaxed here,” he said. “It’s just a level of comfort at this golf course and at this club that I probably don’t have any other venue on Tour…When it’s like this and overseeded, I feel like that’s sort of right in my wheelhouse.”
McIlroy, a three-time winner at Quail Hollow, opened with a 3-under 68 —34-34 — on his 34th birthday.
“I didn’t want to spend my birthday afternoon grinding on the range, so it was nice to play OK,” he said. “It’s not nice to have to wake up at 4:30 a.m. on your birthday, but it’s just another day. I feel just as good now as I did at 24, so with that I still feel like I’ve got a lot of good years left in me. It’s nice to be out there and everyone wishing you, sort of wishing you a good day.”
That included a few admirers, who made him birthday cards.
“The two people that gave me those cards were my pro-am partners yesterday, Madeline and Kai from The First Tee, so it was nice of them to write a couple little notes,” he said.
