Herbert takes the lead with 9-under-par 63 to open Fortinet Championship at Silverado
Lucas Herbert got on a roll Thursday in the first round of the Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort and Spa.
Six straight birdies on the back nine of the North Course.
Ten birdies in all on his card.
Only 22 putts.
A long drive of 369 yards.
A perfect 100 percent on sand saves, going 2-for-2.
The result — a masterful 9-under-par 63 and the lead in the Fortinet Championship, a PGA Tour event that carries an $8.4 million purse. It’s the first event of the FedExCup Fall, a group of seven tournaments played after the Tour Championship that finalizes eligibility for the 2024 PGA Tour season.
“I 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,” said Herbert, 27, who is from Peregian Beach, Australia. “I didn’t feel like I played bad, felt like I played OK and just got a lot of good breaks, and capitalized on chances as well.”
Herbert’s front nine of 2-under-par 33 featured birdies on Nos. 3, 5 and 7. The only bogey of his round came on the sixth hole.
He really had it going on the back side, making birdies on Nos. 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17, as he shot 7-under-par 30.
“I’m going to go do a bunch of practice now because I don’t think I really played that well today,” said Herbert. “I think I got really lucky. It felt like every time I missed the fairway or missed a shot, it seemed to finish in a decent position where I could kind of recover.
“Obviously, made a stack of putts out there which helped, but I still feel super rusty after today. It’s funny to say that after shooting 63, but I still feel a long way away from where I’d like to be. It’s really nice to shoot 63, but I’m going to do my best to go out there with the same attitude (Friday) and that is the main focus of the week.”
The North Course, a par-72, 7,166-yard layout, is a super tough test — a combination of tight, narrow fairways, greens that have intense slope and speed.
Herbert leads by a two-shot margin over S.H Kim, who shot a 7-under 65.
He has a three-shot lead over Kelly Kraft, Jason Dufner, Sung Kang, Harry Hall, Mark Hubbard and Zac Blair, each with 6-under 66s.
“Sometimes it’s really cold in the mornings here. It was great, just had a light sweater on. I’ve never seen the golf course in this good of shape,” said Joel Dahmen, who opened with a 3-under 69. “This is unbelievable — the greens are rolling great. I felt like it was really scorable out there.”
The field went low as a whole on Day 1.
“Today was nice. The weather was perfect — that helps a little bit, and it was nice to just get out there and make some birdies and get off to a good start,” said Dufner.
“I think I did everything pretty well. I was pretty happy with all phases of my game. I was able to have a very aggressive mindset and be aggressive in my self-talk and be pretty direct in what I was trying to tell myself to do and that gave me a lot of freedom to play out there today.”
Herbert is making his 52nd career PGA Tour start this week. He joined the Tour in 2022 and has one win — Butterfield Bermuda Championship, at Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton, Bermuda, in 2021. He is 59th in the Official World Golf Ranking and 152nd in the FedExCup standings.
His best finish during the 2022–23 season was a tie for ninth place at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, in March, at Austin Country Club, in Austin, TX.
Herbert came into the Fortinet Championship having taken seven weeks off and not having played since The Open Championship, in July, when he missed the cut at Royal Liverpool, Hoylake, Wirral, England.
“I’ve only been back on the Tour about a week now, so everything kind of feels like an adjustment out there at the moment,” he said. “Still feel like I’m knocking the rust off a little bit. I just tried to play the shot rather than the context as much as I could out there today and that was probably just the difference.
“I didn’t sort of let the score or scoreboard worry me too much and just played nice and freely, which I was really happy with.”
Herbert said he did not want to think about golf or talk about golf for about a good month after missing the cut at The Open Championship.
“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. I just needed to get away from the game and refresh everything. 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,” he said.
“I just knew that I needed that mental reset. From the outside it doesn’t look like the greatest decision to make, but I really needed the reset. I was just able to get away from golf for a while. It was nice. I went and spent some time around people where I wasn’t the main focus of everyone’s life for the day. I was able to go and be a part of other people’s lives, which is something we don’t get to do as golfers.
“I feel like coming here this week I was ready to play again. It was good just to get away from the game a bit, take care of some of that stuff in my life and feel like I was able to bring that back maybe a little lower so I was able to function a little easier.”
Herbert was definitely dialed into his game, particularly with the putter. He began his round at 7:50 a.m., with overcast skies and cool, mild conditions.
He hit 8-of-14 fairways in regulation and 13-of-18 greens in regulation. He was also 4-of-5 scrambling.
“It doesn’t take much for you to be off out here. When you don’t get a few of those results, it just compounds and it compounds and you put more pressure on yourself, and it gets worse and very quickly you can go down a slippery slope. It’s pretty hard to take any time off in the middle of the season. It sort of got to a point, a sort of breaking point, I just had to do it. Didn’t really watch a lot of golf. It was just lovely to get away from the game, to be honest,” he explained.
Max Homa, the tournament’s two-time defending champion, is tied for 34th after opening with a 2-under 70.
“I didn’t feel super. I actually felt like I kept it in front of me pretty good. Didn’t do anything special to get going anywhere, but overall it was solid. I don’t think anything stuck out as overly bad or overly great. It was a decent day,” said Homa.
Homa hit 8-of-14 fairways in regulation and 13-of-18 greens in regulation.
At №7, Homa is the highest-ranked player in the field. With a tie for fifth place at the BMW Championship, he clinched a spot on the U.S. Ryder Cup team.
Justin Thomas, a 15-time winner on Tour who has won two majors and is a past FedExCup champion, opened with a 3-under 69 and is tied for 20th.
“I thought I managed it very well. I didn’t hit particularly well, especially the front nine, but kind of kept searching, kept fighting,” said Thomas. “I felt like I was close, and some of those drives I was just missing left. I was managing my game well. I felt that’s exactly what I did at the Wyndham. I just needed to make sure that I managed a decent score, and 3 under with how I feel like I hit it is a great thing.”
Thomas was one of six captain’s picks, as announced last month by U.S. captain Zach Johnson, for the Ryder Cup.
Tournament Notes
* The Fortinet Championship is televised by Golf Channel
* Friday’s second-round starting times go from 6:55 a.m. to 2:17 p.m.
* The field consists of 156 players. The winner receives $1,512,000 and 500 FedEx Cup points.
* To purchase tickets, or for more information, go to fortinetchampionship.com.
