Lucas Herbert, in his first start since missing the cut at the Open Championship in July, opened with a 9-under 63 to match his career-low score and take the lead at the Fortinet Championship.
“152nd in the FedExCup, golf’s been getting me down pretty hard this year. It was just a tough stretch there where I had a lot going on both in my life and on the golf course as well.
“Yeah, I missed the cut at The Open, I didn’t really want to think about golf or talk about golf for about a good month there, just needed to get away from the game and refresh everything. It sucked, I’d love to be here or up on the FedExCup standings as we speak, but hopefully taking that good break, refreshing, have a little reset gives me a better chance to play well in the fall season and get some better results and get into the bigger events again next year.”
The Australian matched his best nine-hole score with a 7-under 30 on the back nine and fired ten birdies, his most in a round in 53 starts, including a career-best six straight birdies from the 12th. His round also included a career-best 22 putts, totaling 144’ 4” of made putts.
“Found a little groove there. It felt like anything I did poorly seemed to work out nicely for me and the good shots got rewarded as well. Yeah, I didn’t feel like I played bad, felt like I played OK and just got a lot of good breaks, and yeah, capitalized on chances as well.”
PGA Tour rookie S.H. Kim shot a bogey-free 65 featuring a 106-yard eagle-2 at the 14th and lies in second place at 7-under.
Six players are tied in third place at 6-under including England’s Harry Hall.
The 2023 Fortinet Championship is the first of seven events in the FedExCup Fall, a group of tournaments after the Tour Championship to help finalize eligibility for the 2024 season; as part of the PGA Tour’s return to a calendar-based schedule in 2024, all seven events in the FedExCup Fall will be played twice as part of the 2022-23 season.
Related: Ludvig Aberg lives up to star billing with impressive opening round at Wentworth
| Pos. | Player | To Par | R1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lucas Herbert | -9 | 63 |
| 2 | S.H. Kim | -7 | 65 |
| T3 | Kelly Kraft | -6 | 66 |
| T3 | Jason Dufner | -6 | 66 |
| T3 | Harry Hall | -6 | 66 |
| T3 | Sung Kang | -6 | 66 |
| T3 | Zac Blair | -6 | 66 |
| T3 | Mark Hubbard | -6 | 66 |
| T9 | Sangmoon Bae | -5 | 67 |
| T9 | Satoshi Kodaira | -5 | 67 |
| T9 | Kevin Streelman | -5 | 67 |
| T9 | Justin Lower | -5 | 67 |
| T13 | Kevin Roy | -4 | 68 |
| T13 | Callum Tarren | -4 | 68 |
| T13 | Sahith Theegala | -4 | 68 |
| T13 | Cam Davis | -4 | 68 |
| T13 | Eric Cole | -4 | 68 |
| T13 | Kramer Hickok | -4 | 68 |
| T13 | Sam Ryder | -4 | 68 |
| T20 | David Lipsky | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Joel Dahmen | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Chad Ramey | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Kevin Kisner | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Zach Johnson | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Doc Redman | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Greyson Sigg | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Hayden Springer | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Austin Cook | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Justin Thomas | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Brendon Todd | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Doug Ghim | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Robby Shelton | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Vince Whaley | -3 | 69 |
| T20 | Tom Johnson | -3 | 69 |
| T35 | Beau Hossler | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Carson Young | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Harrison Endycott | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | D.J. Trahan | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Max Homa | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Luke List | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Matt Kuchar | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Martin Laird | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | K.H. Lee | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Henrik Norlander | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Ryan Moore | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Jonathan Byrd | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Preston Summerhays(a) | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Peter Kuest | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | William McGirt | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Tommy Gainey | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Jimmy Walker | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Dylan Wu | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Davis Thompson | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Russell Knox | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Cameron Percy | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Ben Crane | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Harry Higgs | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Scott Harrington | -2 | 70 |
| T35 | Kyle Westmoreland | -2 | 70 |
| T60 | Sean O'Hair | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | D.A. Points | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Ricky Barnes | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Erik van Rooyen | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Brian Gay | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | J.J. Spaun | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Patton Kizzire | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Hank Lebioda | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | C.T. Pan | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Austin Smotherman | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Trevor Cone | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Fred Biondi | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | MJ Daffue | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Austin Eckroat | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Matthias Schwab | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Peter Malnati | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | J.B. Holmes | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Scott Stallings | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Stewart Cink | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Richy Werenski | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Martin Trainer | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Chesson Hadley | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Justin Suh | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Nate Lashley | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | James Hahn | -1 | 71 |
| T60 | Cyril Bouniol | -1 | 71 |
| T86 | Paul Haley II | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Ryan Palmer | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Will Gordon | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Garrick Higgo | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Andrew Landry | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Andrew Putnam | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Andrew Novak | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Chris Stroud | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Matt NeSmith | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Sam Stevens | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Carl Yuan | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Zecheng Dou | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Greg Chalmers | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Ben Taylor | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Robert Streb | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Mackenzie Hughes | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Stephan Jaeger | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Taylor Montgomery | Par | 72 |
| T86 | Tano Goya | Par | 72 |
| T105 | Tyson Alexander | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Cameron Champ | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Webb Simpson | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Kevin Tway | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Kyle Stanley | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Scott Brown | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Kevin Stadler | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Ben Martin | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Derek Ernst | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Ryan Armour | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Cody Gribble | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Matti Schmid | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Ryan Gerard | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Henry Chung | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Morgan Deneen | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Aaron Baddeley | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Akshay Bhatia | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Chez Reavie | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Tyler Duncan | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Brice Garnett | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | S.Y. Noh | +1 | 73 |
| T105 | Augusto Núñez | +1 | 73 |
| T127 | Wesley Bryan | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Kevin Yu | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Kevin Chappell | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Alex Noren | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Taylor Pendrith | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Brian Stuard | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Max McGreevy | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Troy Merritt | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Nick Hardy | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Lanto Griffin | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Nico Echavarria | +2 | 74 |
| T127 | Jacob Bergeron | +2 | 74 |
| T139 | Dylan Frittelli | +3 | 75 |
| T139 | Adam Long | +3 | 75 |
| T139 | Christiaan Bezuidenhout | +3 | 75 |
| T139 | Nick Watney | +3 | 75 |
| T139 | Michael Gligic | +3 | 75 |
| T139 | Devon Bling | +3 | 75 |
| T145 | Derek Lamely | +4 | 76 |
| T145 | Charley Hoffman | +4 | 76 |
| T145 | Geoff Ogilvy | +4 | 76 |
| T145 | Blake Hathcoat | +4 | 76 |
| T149 | Arjun Atwal | +5 | 77 |
| T149 | Scott Piercy | +5 | 77 |
| T149 | Trevor Werbylo | +5 | 77 |
| T149 | Brent Grant | +5 | 77 |
| T149 | Chase Sienkiewicz | +5 | 77 |
| T154 | Brandon Matthews | +6 | 78 |
| T154 | Jim Herman | +6 | 78 |
| 156 | Ted Potter, Jr. | +7 | 79 |
