FULL LEADERBOARD<\/a><\/p>\nA birdie at the par-3 17th was followed by his round highlight, a 52ft birdie putt at 18. The Waterford native went within a whisker of another big putt when his 47ft attempt at the first was inches off a third successive birdie.<\/p>\n
From there however things took a turn. Power ran into trouble at the greenside bunker at the second on route to a bogey, and that was compounded by further dropped shots at the third and fourth.<\/p>\n
After safely finding the fairway at the par-5 fifth, a controlled approach shot opened up a birdie opportunity. That shot was given back at his penultimate hole of the afternoon, the 400-yard seventh when a wayward tee shot left of the fairway gave him too much to do.<\/p>\n
He closed for a one-over 72, eight shots adrift of clubhouse leader Sungjae Im of South Korea whose round included a pair of eagles, half a dozen birdies and bogeys in two of his final three holes.<\/p>\n
Brandt Snedeker is one back after a bogey-free 65, turning a sponsor exemption into an early statement.<\/p>\n
Davis Thompson sits in third at 66, while Billy Horschel, Andrew Putnam and Pierceson Coody are tied for fourth with matching 67s.<\/p>\n
Ten players, including Xander Schauffele and England’s Matt Fitzpatrick, share seventh place at 68.<\/p>\n
Im missed the start of this season due to a wrist injury, finally returning to action at the Arnold Palmer Invitational earlier this month. He missed the cut there and at The Players Championship, making his Thursday surge a surprise.<\/p>\n
Im opened his \u200cround on the 10th hole and \u2060was 4 under through his first three holes, including an eagle on the par-5 11th. He started his second nine with another eagle on par-5 first hole, then added birdies on two of the next four holes, but he bogeyed two of his last four.<\/p>\n
“I had a very good start,” said Im, whose only two PGA Tour wins came \u200cin 2020 and 2021. “… I did not have very good starts the last few months. After last week, I really felt like I had to refine some \u2060techniques and I was able to focus on specific techniques, and I refined it and for \u200cthis weekend I feel like that’s a really good outcome.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"S\u00e9amus Power carded a one-over 72 at the opening round of Valspar Championship after struggling on his back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-485979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}