PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic (AP) \u2014 Todd Clements of England and Ivan Cantero Gutierrez of Spain each shot 7-under 65 on Thursday at breezy Puntacana Resort to share the first-round lead in the Corales Puntacana Championship.<\/p>\n
Clements and Gutierrez are two of the 50 European tour players in the field for the co-sanctioned event played opposite the British Open. They both missed the cut last week in Kentucky in the ISCO Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think the whole place is just an enjoyable place to be,\u201d Clements said. \u201cTurned up and it\u2019s a relaxing environment. Just get to enjoy myself and I kind of felt like it came out in my golf today.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a day when the wind gusted to 22 mph on the Corales layout, Clements had nine birdies and two bogeys, dropping a late stroke on the par-3 17th in the morning session. He won the 2023 Czech Masters for his lone DP World Tour victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m actually delighted with how I played today,\u201d Clements said. \u201cA few tweaks I\u2019m going to try and solve this afternoon, but for the main part I was absolutely delighted and looking forward to tomorrow and what that brings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Austin Eckroat was a stroke back with Alejandro Del Rey, Johannes Veerman, Mackenzie Hughes, Jonathan Byrd and Gordon Sargent. Two-time PGA Tour winner Eckroat tied for 30th Sunday in the Scottish Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were over in Scotland last week and trying to qualify for the British Open, but when we saw we were going to be here, we said, `Well, someone\u2019s got to win it,’\u201d Eckroat said. \u201cHuge going into the rest of the season. A lot of points available, good momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blades Brown had a 67. He got in the field as a special temporary member.<\/p>\n
U.S. Presidents Cup captain Brandt Snedeker shot 70. He won an opposite-field event in Myrtle Beach in May.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Garrick Higgo had a 72.<\/p>\n
Sangmoon Bae opened with a 77. Playing on a sponsor exemption, Bae’s trying to get back on track since his mandatory military service in South Korea a decade ago.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP golf: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/golf<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic (AP) \u2014 Todd Clements of England and Ivan Cantero Gutierrez of Spain each shot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-807485","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\/807485","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=807485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}