BLAINE, Minn. \u2014 Ben Kohles eagled the final hole for a 9-under 62 and a two-shot lead Thursday after the first round of the 3M Open, leaving top-ranked Scottie Scheffler three shots back.<\/p>\n
Emiliano Grillo, Jackson Koivun and Gary Woodland opened with 64s, and Scheffler topped the group at 65 in his first appearance in the event.<\/p>\n
Coming off a fourth-place finish Sunday in the British Open, Scheffler was 1 under through eight holes, then birdied five of the next eight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t hit a bunch of fairways early, but I was able to kind of manage my way around and get out of some trouble areas without making any bogeys. That was important keeping my momentum going,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce I started to hit fairways and gave myself some looks, was able to start making some birdies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kohles\u2019 second shot from 241 yards out on the par-5 finishing hole settled 4 feet from the cup. The short putt capped a career-best round for the 36-year-old who has split the season between the PGA and Korn Ferry tours.<\/p>\n
In a nine-hole stretch beginning on No. 6, he birdied every other hole and added another birdie at No. 15 to tie for the lead at 7 under.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just in control all day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Three weeks ago, Kohles nearly got his first career win, but a\u00a0double bogey on the final hole\u00a0resulted in a third-place finish at the John Deere Classic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course you would like the outcome to be different, but you\u2019ve just got to keep putting the pedal down and see where you go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Koivun birdied four holes on the front nine and three on the back during a bogey-free round at the TPC Twin Cities, where scores are traditionally low. In the tournament\u2019s seven previous years, the average winning score was 19 under.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlaying smart, playing for a score. Just executing when the time is right and getting aggressive when you can,\u201d he said. \u201cJust felt like I did a good job of taking advantage of that today.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his 13th tour start, but just third as a professional, 64 is the lowest score in Koivun\u2019s 43 career rounds. The 21-year-old turned professional in June after dominating at Auburn, including a school-record 11 wins.<\/p>\n
Grillo made birdie on five of his first seven holes and added three straight birdies starting at No. 12. However, he played the final three holes in 1-over.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny day beating Scottie Scheffler is a good day, so I\u2019ll take that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Defending champion Kurt Kitayama shot 68.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BLAINE, Minn. \u2014 Ben Kohles eagled the final hole for a 9-under 62 and a two-shot lead Thursday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-824146","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\/824146","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=824146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}