Jordan Spieth leads the FedEx St Jude Championship after flawless opening round
- Planet Sport writer
- 11 August 2023
Jordan Spieth's sizzling seven under 63 saw him surge to the top of the leaderboard after round one of the FedEx St Jude Championship on Thursday.
Jordan Spieth is back.
He goes into round two in Memphis leading Tom Kim by one shot and admitted he has been working on his putting.
"Quite a bit of putting. I played really well at the British. Tee to green, I played well enough to win," he said afterwards.
"I didn't feel like I missed many of my lines. I just couldn't quite get the matching of the line and speed on the greens.
"Now we come to slopey Bermuda and very fast slopey Bermuda where I feel a little more comfortable picking lines and kind of feeding the ball in using gravity.
"I think that helped, along with quite a bit of work as best I could in Texas right now, which is really from the hours of 7:00 a.m to noon before it's almost unbearable.
"Just tightened some things up. I tried to play a lot just to shoot scores. I had kind of taken off playing a bunch, and I think that that helped a bit in the last couple weeks."
Meanwhile, world number one Scottie Scheffler was two over early on but responded with six birdies over his last 12 holes. He finished three under, four shots off the lead.
"It's frustrating obviously when you see everybody is making birdies and you're two over through four or five holes," Scheffler said.
"It was frustrating, but hung in there nicely and played some really good golf after that."
England's Tommy Fleetwood and Aaron Rai are the best of the British contingent, closing out Thursday on four under par.
Rory McIlroy sits a shot back on three under, after the Northern Irishman split three bogeys with four birdies and an eagle.
