PGA Championship Round 1: Jhonattan Vegas Fires 64 as the Stars Sink in the Mud

Thursday at Quail Hollow was supposed to be a coronation rehearsal for the game's biggest names. Instead, the first page of the PGA Championship leaderboard looked like it was printed for a fall event, and the man on top was a 40-year-old Venezuelan who had never finished inside the top 20 at a major.

Jhonattan Vegas shot a 7-under 64 to take a two-shot lead after the opening round of the 107th PGA Championship. Ryan Gerard and Cam Davis are tied for second at 5-under 66. A five-player logjam sits at 4-under 67: Stephan Jaeger, Aaron Rai, Alex Smalley, Ryan Fox and Luke Donald. Scottie Scheffler, the world No. 1, is at 2-under 69, and that was the best score anyone in the top 10 of the world ranking could manage.

Vegas Finds Another Gear

Vegas had broken 70 just three times in 18 previous PGA Championship rounds and had never gone lower than 68 in this event, according to the PGA of America. He had missed 10 cuts in 16 major starts.

None of that mattered once the finish started. Vegas birdied five of his last six holes, including an 18-footer on the eighth and a 25-footer on the ninth, his closing holes after starting on the back. It was his best score in 45 major championship rounds, from a four-time PGA TOUR winner whose latest title was the 2024 3M Open.

"Any chance you get to shoot 64 at a major championship is always great," Vegas said, per the AP.

Mud, Sunshine and a Green Mile Toll

The weather finally broke after three days of rain, and the sunshine brought a different problem. With the ball played down, mud kept caking onto golf balls in the fairways, and players had no way of knowing which way a shot would squirt. Whether preferred lies should have been in play became the debate of the day.

The scoring tells the story. The field averaged 72.757 on a par-71 layout, and only 45 players broke par. The closing stretch known as the Green Mile was brutal: the 16th played as the hardest hole at a 4.410 average and the par-3 17th was next at 3.372. Across those final three holes, the field made 29 birdies against 194 bogeys and 27 doubles or worse, per CBS Sports.

The Chasers Nobody Circled

Gerard, a 25-year-old North Carolina native making a PGA Championship debut, got to 7 under after a 60-foot eagle putt on the par-5 15th and a run of four straight birdies on the back nine. Then came bogeys on 17 and 18.

Davis had seven birdies and had a 10-footer for par on his final hole that would have put him in a share of the lead. It slid by. For a player who had missed the cut in four of his last five major starts, a 66 was a loud reset.

Then there is the 67 club. Smalley was the first alternate and learned about 15 hours before his tee time that he was in the field, then holed a 70-foot eagle putt on the way to his round. Fox got in by winning the Myrtle Beach Classic. And Donald, 47 years old, ranked 871st in the world and in the field as Europe's Ryder Cup captain, produced the only bogey-free round of the day. U.S. captain Keegan Bradley was a shot further back at 68, alongside Matt Fitzpatrick. Those two are the only major winners among the top 19 on the board.

Scheffler Scrambles, the Stars Stumble

For the first time in at least 30 years, none of the top 10 players in the world ranking sat inside the top 10 after the opening round of a major, per the AP.

Scheffler came closest. He holed two shots from off the green, one for birdie and one for eagle, and stuck a 6-iron from 215 yards to 3 feet on the ninth. He also made a double bogey on 16 after a mud ball sent his approach into the water, his first double in an opening round at a major, according to Sports Illustrated. Scheffler said he posted a number without his best stuff, and called mud balls about as frustrating as it gets for a player.

Defending champion Xander Schauffele had the same 16th-hole double after a mud-affected shot and signed for a 1-over 72. Bryson DeChambeau, whose fit at Quail Hollow we broke down in our preview of the course, bogeyed the last to settle for an even-par 71.

Rory McIlroy, a month removed from completing the career Grand Slam at Augusta, shot 74. He hit four fairways, made a double-bogey 6 on 16 and did not make a birdie over his final 12 holes. It was his highest round since 2018.

Spieth's Slam Wait Gets Longer

The toughest day belonged to Jordan Spieth, who arrived with the career Grand Slam on the line again, a storyline we explored in our Spieth preview. Three straight bogeys early on the back nine, part of a 40 on that side, left Spieth at 76 and 12 shots off the lead. Phil Mickelson matched his highest opening round in this event with a 79.

Friday's Assignment

The leaderboard has rarely looked this upside down after 18 holes of a major. Vegas has two shots and a hot putter. The pack behind him is short on major pedigree and long on confidence. And the names everybody expected to see are stuck in the middle with a cut line to think about.

Full first-round details are in the PGA TOUR's Round 1 recap (opens in a new tab) and the PGA of America's report (opens in a new tab).

Sources: PGA TOUR, PGA of America (pgachampionship.com), AP, CBS Sports, Sports Illustrated. More golf coverage on Undrafted.

Photo: PGA TOUR.