‘It doesn’t feel real’: You missed the most impressive round of PGA Thursday

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — David Puig was a few minutes removed from a perfectly ordinary opening round at the PGA Championship when he made an extraordinary admission.

“It was weird for sure,” he said, grinning. “I’ve only ever played the front nine. I’d never seen the back nine in my life.”

Puig, whose last name is pronounced “Pooj,” seemed proud of, if not particularly affected by, this information. He talked about his first go-round on the back nine at Quail Hollow the way one might discuss a trip to the gas station, not the opening round of the second major championship of 2025 — a tone so flippant that his statement eventually required clarification.

Wait, seriously?

“Today was the first day I’d ever seen the back nine,” Puig said. “I didn’t even know where the holes were going and how the greens were.”

But it is unusual for a professional golfer to arrive for the opening round at a major championship without having so much as walked the golf course, as Puig did on Thursday morning.

Eric Cole, who bested Puig by a shot on Thursday, couldn’t suppress a raised eyebrow when he learned of Puig’s pre-tournament plan.

“It’s very tough,” Cole said. “He probably picked up on it quick, but yeah, it’d be a big surprise to see how soft everything is when the greens are still firm.”

Was it similar to taking a test without studying, I wondered?

“I think it’s a little further along than that … but, yeah,” Cole said.

Thankfully, Puig’s baffling study strategy wasn’t quite dog-ate-my-homework. Rather, the 23-year-old pro revealed his prep was driven by a back injury that popped up during his last LIV start in Korea, and proved so debilitating that Puig arrived in Charlotte skeptical he’d compete at all.

“My back hasn’t felt okay for the last nine, ten days, so no practice at all since the last day of Korea,” Puig said. “Tuesday morning, I thought for sure that I wasn’t going to tee it up today. I managed to play [the front nine] yesterday, and gave it a try today. It actually responded quite nice.”

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Nice might be underselling it. Most of Puig’s even-par, opening-round 71 was brilliant, including a stretch of four birdies in five holes that briefly pushed him to four under for the day. For most of a hot, sticky Thursday at the PGA, he looked nothing like a man who’d entered the morning on the brink of a medical WD, and showed nothing of the inexperience of a major championship competitor seeing the golf course for the first time. Hell, his first-ever glimpse of the back nine at Quail Hollow started with back-to-back birdies on the 10th and 11th holes.

“I mean, I hit a great shot on 10 and 11,” Puig said. “On 13 I almost made birdie. And I played 14 and 15 pretty good, too.”

His dream round would end with a bogey and a double on Quail’s famed Green Mile to push him back to even par, but neither score would be enough to remove the shine from a start at the PGA that’d startled even him.

“I mean, it’s shocking, you know, you get to those last three, four holes and you see this finish,” Puig said. “Obviously, without me even practicing, you’re standing over the ball and it doesn’t feel real, right?”

Reality remains suspended for David Puig as the sun sets on PGA Championship Thursday. His back is still a mystery — and a long day of recovery stands between now and his tee time on Friday afternoon.

As he spoke from just outside the scorer’s tent at Quail Hollow, Puig still seemed dazed. He’d been surprised by a lot on Thursday, but nothing compared to the surprise of his scorecard.

“I was able to lead the tournament for a while,” he said. “I was like, Jesus, maybe I have a chance to go pretty deep.”