Eight players share lead in Panama
PANAMA CITY, Panama – The Nationwide Tour’s 20th season-opener Thursday was more grind than celebration, more parity than party. A traditionally difficult golf course, coupled with enough wind to keep the players guessing and plenty of winter rust added together to keep first-round scores at the Panama Digicel Championship from getting too far below par. The net result was a Tour record-matching eight players tied for the lead at the $600,000 kickoff event at Panama Golf Club, which ranked as the toughest course on Tour for the 2008 campaign.Veteran Kevin Johnson heads the list of co-leaders who successfully negotiated their way around fairways and greens that will get tougher as the week progresses. Sharing the top spot on the leaderboard are Jim Herman, Australian Andrew Buckle, Texan Omar Uresti, Clodomiro Carranza of Argentina, Rafael Gomez of Mexico, Skip Kendall and 2005 champion Vance Veazey.
Thursday’s record matches the 2001 Ozarks Open and the 2007 Oregon Classic, where eight players were also jammed together after day one.
At one point in the afternoon, a dozen players shared the lead at 3-under, with nine more at 2-under and 22 more only two shots off the pace.
At various times during the day, scoring problems also erroneously resulted in Carranza initially posting a 62, Veazey a 64, Dustin Risdon a 66 (actual 70) and Champions Tour member John Morse a 66 (71).
“I sure wish that scoreboard was right,” chuckled Veazey after signing for his 67.
Johnson, a 41-year old four-time Tour winner, was the third group off the morning tee and admitted to having some early butterflies as the season began
“Your heart’s always racing so much more when you’re starting out,” he said. “It’s different than being at home and playing every day with your buddies for $5. It means so much more out here. Maybe too much sometimes.”
“I certainly didn’t expect to play well today,” said the Florida resident who was the first to reach the clubhouse correctly at minus-3. “I haven’t been playing well and if you asked the guys I played practice rounds with this week, they probably would have said I’d shoot 75 today.”
Seventy-five wasn’t Johnson’s final score, but it did match his caddie’s age. A local resident named Felix has been toting for Johnson the past four years at this event.
“He’s amazing,” Johnson said of his caddie. “I’ve been on Tour a long time and he’s the only caddie I’ve ever let read greens for me. I wish I could take him back to the States with me.”
Shortly after Johnson posted his score, Herman and Buckle joined the soon-to-be pile at 3-under.
“There wasn’t too much rust to knock off for me,” said Buckle, who spent the past three weeks getting ready in Phoenix. “I’ve been working pretty hard in the off-season. Towards the end of last year I was struggling quite a bit. My swing and my set-up weren’t good. I’ve been working on getting the fundamentals back in order.”
Buckle is making his first start in this event and figured he needed to keep things simple on a layout that yielded only four sub-par totals last year.
“Keeping the ball in position off the tee is critical here,” he said. “There are a lot of holes you need to be careful on. You can make some big numbers in a hurry. Today was definitely better than I expected. I haven’t been here before and I haven’t played in a couple of months, and when I did play last, it was pretty ugly.”
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