Garcia leads The Players Championship
Sergio Garcia put together his third straight impressive round at The Players Championship. The first two gave him a runner-up finish last year. The 6-under 66 on Thursday at Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., was only a great start.
Garcia birdied all the par 5s and picked up a bonus birdie with a 50-foot putt on the 14th hole to build a 2-shot lead on the frightening Stadium Course. It was a good step toward ending an 0-for-53 drought on the PGA Tour, the longest of his career.
Kenny Perry and Paul Goydos each had a 68 in the morning. Sawgrass turned downright difficult in the afternoon.
Of the 34 players who broke par in the opening round, only eight played in the afternoon in the increasingly blustery conditions.
Michelob Ultra Open: The booming drives were there, but more often than not, Michelle Wie didn't know where they were going in her first round on the LPGA Tour since February.
The best scores, as usual, belonged to just about everyone else -- a course record-tying 63 by Scotland's Mhairi McKay, and a potential battle looming between Lorena Ochoa and Annika Sorenstam in the Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill in Williamsburg, Va.
Wie managed just one birdie in a zig-zagging 4-over 75 on a soggy day, even as the River Course yielded its fourth 8-under 63 in six years, 64s to Sorenstam and Sun Young Yoo, and 65s to Ochoa and Diana D'Alessio.
Italian Open: John Daly shot a 5-under 67 in the Italian Open in Milan, leaving him 3 strokes behind first-round leaders Ross McGowan and Marco Ruiz.
The 609th-ranked Daly had 7 birdies and 2 bogeys. He hasn't finished in the top 10 in a tournament in three years.