Daily Wrap Up<\/p>\n
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Highlights | Round 1 | Cognizant Classic <\/p>\n
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Written by Associated Press<\/p>\n
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Austin Smotherman’s one previous PGA TOUR appearance at the tournament now known as the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches was in 2022 and it was unmemorable: He shot 70 in the first round, 76 in the second and missed the cut by four shots.<\/p>\n
Given that, he didn’t see a round like Thursday’s coming.<\/p>\n
Smotherman matched the best score of his career, shooting a 9-under 62 to take a one-stroke lead over Nico Echavarria after the first round.<\/p>\n
Smotherman became the seventh player to shoot 62 or better at PGA National in this event. The others: Jake Knapp (59 in round 1, 2025), Matt Jones (61 in round 1, 2021), Brian Harman (61 in round 2, 2012), Chris Kirk (62 in round 2, 2023), Brandon Hagy (62 in round 2, 2021) and Tiger Woods (62 in the final round, 2012).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a pretty easy round,\u201d Smotherman said, \u201con a golf course that shouldn\u2019t be this easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Austin Smotherman sinks a 28-foot birdie putt on No. 7 at Cognizant Classic<\/p>\n
And that is a talking point at PGA National.<\/p>\n
The course is overseeded, which means rye has been added to the Bermudagrass. The advantages are many, including the grass looking greener, which means PGA National looks prettier on television. Not just that, but the course plays softer as well.<\/p>\n
Put in simplest terms, an overseeded PGA National isn\u2019t as daunting to get around as the PGA National of a few years ago. Mark Wilson won in the tournament\u2019s first year on this course with a score of 5 under, and 11 of the first 14 winners at PGA National finished less than 10-under par. The winning scores in the last five years: 12 under, 10 under, 14 under, 17 under and 19 under.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really good golf course,\u201d said Billy Horschel, who shot a 2-under 69 on Thursday. \u201cIt\u2019s a very fair golf course. When it blows hard, it\u2019s a challenge, and when it\u2019s sort of benign like it is today, it\u2019s gettable. A few years ago the rough was longer and then they started cutting it down and then they overseeded the golf course.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, I think the TOUR gets a bad rap, and it\u2019s not anything against the owners of PGA National. I understand where they would want to overseed. People want it to look pretty on TV, and if it looks pretty on TV, maybe people will want to come play it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Horschel created a bit of a buzz on Wednesday when he weighed in on X<\/a> to discuss the overseeding issue. On Thursday, he didn\u2019t rant and rave \u2014 but made clear that he preferred the PGA National that had some more teeth than this version.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand we are using a golf course that we don\u2019t own a lot of times, and sometimes we\u2019re at the discretion of what the owner wants to do,\u201d Horschel said. \u201cObviously we give our opinion of what we think is best for the golf course and how they want to set it up and challenge it, but also, the owners have a say in it. This isn\u2019t just PGA National; it goes to a lot of courses that we play throughout the years.\u201d<\/p>\n Smotherman \u2014 fueled by six consecutive birdies on holes 7 through 12 \u2014 tapped in for a birdie on the par-5 finishing hole for the second 62 in his PGA TOUR career. He also shot 62 in the first round of the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in October 2022.<\/p>\n He held a first-round lead once before this week, at the 2023 VidantaWorld Mexico Open, and hasn\u2019t won any of his first 81 starts on TOUR. He’s also playing without a line on the ball this week, seeing what that does for his putting.<\/p>\n \u201cTrying to just be a little bit more freeing with the stroke, be an artist on the greens, see the line, kind of let it just be external, look at the hole, see where I want it to go in and just trust that I\u2019m pretty good at just aiming in the general vicinity that needs to happen,\u201d Smotherman said. \u201cThen from there, just letting good speed take over, and hopefully the hole gets in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n Echavarria shot 63 in the morning half of the draw. No one else who started in the morning shot better than 67, with Taylor Moore and Jackson Suber coming in with those scores. Potus Nyholm, Kristoffer Reitan, Daniel Berger and Kevin Roy had 67s in the afternoon, but nobody got close to Smotherman.<\/p>\n *:not(style){overflow:hidden;position:absolute;top:0px;right:0px;bottom:0px;left:0px;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;width:100%;height:100%;}.css-11jnzpa>img,.css-11jnzpa>video{object-fit:cover;}.css-11jnzpa::before{height:0px;content:””;display:block;padding-bottom:66.66666666666666%;}]]> Feb 23, 2026<\/p>\n The First Look: TOUR returns to Florida for Cognizant Classic<\/a>The First Look<\/a>![\"Image](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771958830_488_TFL_Cognizant.jpg\"\/)
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"4H AGO 4 Min Read Daily Wrap Up *:not(style){overflow:hidden;position:absolute;top:0px;right:0px;bottom:0px;left:0px;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;width:100%;height:100%;}.css-17ygvlf>img,.css-17ygvlf>video{object-fit:cover;}.css-17ygvlf::before{height:0px;content:””;display:block;padding-bottom:56.25%;}]]> Highlights | Round 1 | Cognizant Classic *:not(style)~*:not(style){margin-top:0.5rem;-webkit-margin-end:0px;margin-inline-end:0px;margin-bottom:0px;-webkit-margin-start:0px;margin-inline-start:0px;}]]> A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-492648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}