49-year-old leader, 17-year-old contender, 1 unreal stat: Best of WWT round 1
Cameron Percy hits his tee shot on Thursday on the 17th hole at El Cardonal at Diamante.
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Cameron Percy smiled. He shrugged his shoulders. In his last event, a month ago now, he tied for 43rd. In his three events before that, Percy missed three weekends. He is less than a year away from the PGA Tour Champions, 50-and-over circuit, too. And here he was Thursday, the leader at the World Wide Technology Championship, after a PGA Tour-personal best 62.
Golf, right? But perhaps no one is more surprised at the developments than Percy himself.
“I was lying in bed this morning and everything was hurting, and I’m like, what am I doing?” Percy said on Golf Channel.
“I’m 49 now; what am I doing with these young bucks and stuff?”
Winning, for one.
With that, here is a look at the darkness-delayed first round of the World Wide Technology Championship, played at the Tiger Woods-designed El Cardonal Diamante course in Los Cabos, Mexico.
A 49-year-old leads
Percy started fast, kept it going and finished strong. He birdied 1, 3, 5 and 9 and eagled 6 for a six-under 30 on the front nine, and he birdied 10, 11, 13 and 18 for a 10-under 62. For a while, he flirted with a 59.
With a handful of players yet to finish their first round due to darkness, Percy leads by two over four players.
“Yeah, just hit a really nice drive down the first and a beautiful 3-wood about 30 feet, I guess, and rolled it about six foot by, which I didn’t want to do, then and made it,” Percy said. “Then holed like a 15-footer on 3, which was nice. Then I holed a pitch shot from about 75 yards and that sort of kicked me along to five-under, I think. Then played really nicely through 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. I hit the ball beautifully. Didn’t hit it quite close enough coming in, but I had a few looks. I couldn’t make ’em all.”
Notably, Percy is planning to play in a few weeks in the PGA Tour Champions Q School.
“I’m 152 I think on the [PGA Tour’s] money list or FedExCup, sorry, so finishing top 150 at my age would be fantastic,” he said. “That’s sort of — I want to at least do that, but if I can keep the ball rolling like I did today, I should be able to finish a lot higher than that, and then lead into Q-School with the Champions Tour.
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to that.”
A 17-year-old contends
Eight shots back of Percy is Billy Davis.
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Who is 32 years back of Percy.
The 17-year-old sensation Monday-qualified into the event, then went to work. He birdied the 10th hole, his opening hole. And 13, 16 and 18. Davis, the twin brother of 2022 Augusta National Women’s Amateur winner Anna Davis, was contending, then stumbled toward the end and was two-under with one hole to go in his first round.
“I had a really good group today,” Davis said. “They were all nice to me so I felt pretty comfortable out there to begin with. Still have to play No. 9 tomorrow, but we’re in a good spot.”
One wild stat
The fairways at El Cardonal at Diamante are wide. Ahead of the World Wide Technology Championship, players talked about it openly.
“My first impression is that it’s not very tight off the tee,” Maverick McNealy said.
“The fairways are wider,” Keith Mitchell said.
“Yeah, the first thing I think of when it’s a Tiger Woods design is that you kind of know that the fairways are going to be wide,” Sahith Theegala said.
“It’s fairly wide off the tee,” Ludvig Aberg said.
And so on and so forth.
But this stat was wild.
During play on Thursday, players hit a whopping 90.3 percent of fairways. Thirty-two players were a perfect 14 of 14 on fairways hit. Forty-seven players missed one. Every player hit at least nine.
How accurate was that?
The PGA Tour average entering the week was 58.07 percent. The Tour’s best player in driving accuracy percentage, Russell Henley, was at 71.4 percent.
The leaderboard
Below is a look at the leaderboard. Golf Channel’s coverage of round two starts at 4:30 p.m. ET on Friday.
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