Thursday was a was a wonderful, cool, early summer day in the Connecticut countryside, just outside Hartford, the insurance capital of the world and things were just perfect for the first round of The Travelers.
The Connecticut River was flowing steadily alongside the TPC River Highlands — no wind, a receptive golf course measuring around 6,800-scoreable yards and golf-hungry crowds were on hand for this 2021 edition of The Travelers.
With the Open Championship just 15 short days away, enough big names from last week’s U.S. Open bash at Torrey Pines showed up to the delight of the afore-mentioned golf-hungry crowds.
PGA champ Phil Mickelson, twice a winner at this Tour stop was on hand, paired with three-time Travelers winner Bubba Watson. Defending champion Dustin Johnson, demoted from world’s No. 1 to No. 2 by Jon Rahm last week was out there as was Patrick Reed. Both Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau showed up to produce the latest episode of their hissy-feud. Last week it was Brooks getting the best of Bryson on the scoreboard and surely Brooks took note of Bryson’s back-nine 44 on Sunday for future harassment purposes.
Patrick Cantlay was back and they may or may not recall that he shot 60 at this event back in 2011 as an amateur. Trophy-hating Tony Finau could surely play this short course like a pitch-and-putt while Matt Wolff was on hand to continue his feel-good mental recovery.
There were enough big names where surely one of them would put up a really good, attention-getting number on day one.
Didn’t happen.
Instead, your Travelers leaderboard looked like this:
63: (Seven-Under Par): Kramer Hickok (no relation to Wild Bill); Satoshi Kodaira (no, that’s not number three on the sushi menu).
64: (Six-Under Par): Talor (the) Gooch.
65: (Five-Under Par): Maverick McNealy (the Tour’s Richie Rich), Brice Garnett, Beau Hossler, Henrik Norlander, Patrick Rodgers.
Well there’s eight reasons to get the crowds fired up.
Or not.
As it turned out, it was a relatively ho-hum day for most of the aforementioned “name players.” Bryson and Brooks battled to a draw, both shot one-under par 69s along with 29 other guys.
All 69 did was put you too close to the day two cut-line, which might come at two, three or even four-under par.
Patrick Reed was in that mass of 69-shooters as was Ocean Course Conqueror Lefty. Cantlay didn’t shoot 60 but did card 68 and needs at least another to stick around for the weekend.
D.J. was the under-achiever of the stars, something he’s been too often lately. All he could muster was an even par effort of 70 and that’s not gonna cut it around this birdie-invitational.
Hickok was your leader until late in the day when Satoshi-san put the 59 watch on. Satoshi-san was a whopping eight-under par with six holes to play and on this gettable par 70, that meant he only needed three birdies over those final six holes on the front nine (he played the back first) and that seemed pretty doable after a birdie-eagle-birdie start to his final nine. Alas, someone must have mentioned to him that he was looking good for the “59” number and in a polite move, not wanting to steal all the attention from Masters champ Hideki Matsuyama back in the homeland, Satoshi-San promptly played the final six in one-over par to tie Hickok for the first round lead.
We might note that Hickok’s claim to fame is that he was in that freshman class at Texas with Jordan Spieth and stayed at Jordy’s house for a while after turning pro to cut down on those real-world expenses.
Not everyone played well. Finau hacked it up for most of the day, shooting 76, as did Wolff.
No telling who’s going to go low (or high) on day two, Friday. As mentioned previously, this setup is an unheard-of 6,800 yards, maybe a tad less on day one and that’s an open door for ghastly low scores at any event.
Bubba kept himself in the conversation for a fourth win with a 66.
This course fits him quite nicely.
But after looking at the first round scores, you could say that about 40 others.
