Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI felt like I hit the ball really well. There’s a number of demanding shots that everybody faces out there and was able to execute some pretty good ones at important times to kind of keep the momentum going and keep the stress level at a minimum,\u201d Conners said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His ball-striking, Conners\u00a0has said previously,\u00a0hasn\u2019t been as good as he\u2019s come to expect so far in 2026\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but he put on a\u00a0tee-to-green\u00a0clinic Thursday at Aronimink. It\u2019s the kind of effort\u00a0he\u2019ll need more of if he hopes to climb the board more heading into the weekend \u2014\u00a0especially staring up at Scheffler, who has now been ranked No. 1 in the world for more than 150 weeks in a row.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the way the course was playing\u00a0(with)\u00a0the wind\u00a0up quite a bit, bogeys could happen really easily. I was fortunate to hit the ball quite well\u00a0and keep myself out of trouble for the most part,\u201d Conners said.\u00a0\u201cI had a few reasonable lies when I did hit it in the rough and was able to advance the ball up around the greens. But a lot of good ball striking today kept me in position to try and make birdies, if not pars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conners was looking to become the first Canadian\u00a0male\u00a0since Adam Hadwin in 2022\u00a0at the U.S. Open\u00a0to own at least a share of a first-round lead at a major. Conners himself led the PGA Championship after Thursday in 2021,\u00a0but prior to that\u00a0a Canadian wasn\u2019t that high up on a major leaderboard after the opening day since Mike Weir all the way back in 2009.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conners will get right back out\u00a0early on Friday\u00a0to try to keep the train going.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I’m excited to get going again in the morning. Had some good momentum going today, try to keep that going into Friday,\u201d Conners said.\u00a0\u201cStill\u00a0lots of golf to be played, but I like how I played today and can take the same feeling into tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conners wasn\u2019t the lone Canadian in red figures Thursday as Nick Taylor leaned on a hot putter \u2014 gaining more than three shots on the field with the flatstick \u2014 to finish at 1 under.\u00a0He\u2019s tied for 15th and just two\u00a0shots back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taylor told Sportsnet earlier in the week that the putter he\u2019s using now is actually the\u00a0same\u00a0red-painted\u00a0one he used to win the RBC Canadian Open in 2023. He had switched it out to try something new at the beginning of the year, but since going back to \u201cold red,\u201d he called it, Taylor notched back-to-back\u00a0top-15\u00a0finishes heading into the PGA Championship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Taylor Pendrith shot 2-over 72 \u2014 a round\u00a0he felt\u00a0was better than his score indicated, he told Sportsnet\u00a0\u2014 while Sudarshan Yellamaraju struggled in his major-championship debut, shooting a 5-over 75.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. \u2014 Corey Conners\u00a0was hitting the ball like his old self Thursday at the PGA Championship.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-670332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Just](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/300x60_GENESIS_PGA_Logo-SN.png\"){kind=logo}
Just play, we\u2019ll handle the rest<\/p>\n