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.
