Thursday At The 107th PGA
Vegas opens with a 64 to lead by two. Plus, a preferred lies debate breaks out (surprise!) while some distance-challenged lesser-knowns dominate on day one at Quail Hollow.
Round One By The Numbers
64: Low round by Jhonattan Vegas
82: High round by Andre Chi, Nic Ishee, Greg Koch
72.757: Round 1 scoring average
7,596: Round 1 actual yardage
533: Par 5 7th hole yardage
535: Par 4 16th hole yardage
4.410: Scoring avg of 16th (1st)
0: Bogeys by Luke Donald (67)
30: Players within five strokes of the lead
34: Of the last 35 PGA Champions were within 6 after round 1 (currently 74 players total)
6 of 20: Players from England in the top 20 (Donald, Fitzpatrick, Rai, Hall, Pence and Hatton)
Two themes emerged during round one of the 2025 PGA Championship.
One was entirely predictable. The other? A stunner.
The surprise from Thursday’s opening day played under hot, muggy but sunny conditions: a leaderboard dominated by a certain kind of golfer. People you haven’t heard of, heard from in a while, or who don’t fit the Quail Hollow profile. They are an admirable group of (mostly) young men whose mothers undoubtedly think they are the berries. But who, for whatever reason, tend to be less proficient in the distance-off-the-tee department.
And the predictable? Players raging about the decision not to play preferred lies in the fairways after the course took on over five inches of rain in the run-up to Thursday’s opener.
Quad readers knew the latter matter would be an issue. I did my best to enhance in Tuesday and Wednesday’s editions to enhance your sleep cycle wondering if the PGA of America would invoke the model local rule for just the second time in major championship history. They did not. And despite unbelievable work by Quail Hollow’s Keith Woods-led maintenance team to make the fairways playable—something players were questioning as late as Wednesday afternoon—several star players suggested the event had been compromised in not allowing them to lift, clean, and place balls in the short grass.
The issue arose early when the top three players in the world all double-bogeyed the 16th hole. Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele both made six after hitting the fairway before facing the daunting approach shot.
“We had to aim right of the grandstands probably,” Schauffele said of the second shot to a green surrounded by water. “I'm not sure. I aimed right of the bunker and I whipped in the water and Scottie whipped it in the water, as well.”
He wasn’t done venting.
“It is what it is, and a lot of guys are dealing with it. But it's just unfortunate to be hitting good shots and to pay them off that way. It's kind of stupid.”
Scheffler unleashed a long tirade related to his first-ever opening round double bogey in a major. Here is the entire thing.
“By the way, this is going to be the last answer that I give on playing it up or down. I mean, I don't make the rules. I think when you're looking at the purest forms of golf, like if you're going to go play links golf, there's absolutely no reason on a links golf course you should play the ball up. It doesn't matter how much rain they get. The course could be flooded under water and the ball is still going bounce somehow because of the way the turf is and the ground underneath the turf.
“In American golf it's significantly different. When you have overseeded fairways that are not sand capped, there's going to be a lot of mud on the ball, and that's just part of it. When you think about the purest test of golf, I don't personally think that hitting the ball in the middle of the fairway you should get punished for.
“On a golf course as good of conditioned as this one is, this is probably a situation in which it would be the least likely difference in playing it up because most of the lies you get out here are all really good. So I understand how a golf purist would be, oh, play it as it lies. But I don't think they understand what it's like literally working your entire life to learn how to hit a golf ball and control it and hit shots and control distance, and all of a sudden due to a rules decision that is completely taken away from us by chance.
“In golf, there's enough luck throughout a 72-hole tournament that I don't think the story should be whether or not the ball is played up or down. When I look at golf tournaments, I want the purest, fairest test of golf, and in my opinion maybe the ball today should have been played up.
“But like I said, I don't make the rules. I deal with what the rules decisions are. I could have let that bother me today when you got a mud ball and it cost me a couple shots. It cost me possibly two shots on one hole, and if I let that bother me, it could cost me five shots the rest of the round. But today I was proud of how I stayed in there, didn't let it get to me and was able to play some solid golf on a day in which I was a bit all over the place and still post a score.”
His passion for wanting to excel at a major championship, get a fair shake, and perform for the fans is undeniable. But it can also be difficult to empathize with the First Worldness of the mudball situation given a few factors of largely recent vintage.
Male pro golfers play preferred lies on the PGA Tour with too much regularity and even occasionally get to touch the ball “through the green,” despite the Rules of Golf strongly discouraging the practice outside of fairways.
Players generally acknowledge the problem is not as extreme when using lower ball flights that they do not want to play.
They have become accustomed to preemptive declarations of the preferred lies model local rule E-3 before lousy conditions even exist in the name of field equity.
Players have been known to stretch the spirit of the rules by using a full club length to gain an advantage beyond simply cleaning mud off their ball.
The modern pro golfer regularly mashes behind the ball in an obvious effort to test and possibly enhance their lies without repercussion.
Playing it as it lies was the guiding spirit behind the construction of the rules. But between concessions that allow for tapping spike marks, grounding clubs in hazards, allowing mashing behind the ball, telling every player they are a gift from God, and other general pampering, it’s hard to lose sleep over their plight.
On the other hand, the players make a strong case that the agronomics of inland American golf are different than linksland and they are subjected to a form of inequity that can take away from the quality of a championship. Their critics suggest they just play lower-flighting shots.
“Show some damn talent, drive the ball lower where it won't pick up mud and it skids,” 1977 PGA Champion Lanny Wadkins texted to Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner and read on Live From.
Beyond the ball flight matter, players could make the host rules committee look silly by advocating for something besides the E-3 “Preferred Lies” local rule.
The E-2 “Cleaning Ball” model local rule could address the mudball situation while limiting the abusive stuff that has produced the “lift, clean and cheat” monikor. The E-2 remedy allows for lift, clean and replace, while E-3 calls for lift, clean and tee it up the way you like.
Okay, I editorialized those last few words, but you get the idea.
vs.
To be clear: I only know about E-2 because I asked a veteran official what options were available this week in expecting the inevitable mudball controversy. Perhaps the six or seven literate players could be shown this and coached to advocate for E-2? Or just show ‘em Lanny’s text.
“The mud balls are going to get worse,” said Schauffele, who is not wrong given what we know is likely to happen as the soil dries. “They're going to get in that perfect cake zone to where it's kind of muddy underneath and then picking up mud on the way through. I mean, you just keep -- I don't know, maybe it hit it a little bit lower off the tee, but then unfortunately the problem with hitting it low off the tee is the ball doesn't carry or roll anywhere, so then you sacrifice distance. It's a bit of a crapshoot.”
As for the surprise leaderboard, it’s a doozy. More Wyndham than major. Gruesome actually. But it’s only Thursday. So we won’t work too hard getting to know some of these surprises. A few top performers and their backstories made for nice stories: