Rod Pampling fires round of 60 to lead Shriners Hospitals for Children Open
Rod Pampling might want to hit the tables.
The 47-year-old veteran, whose last of two PGA Tour titles came in the 2006 Bay Hill Invitational, made two eagles and seven birdies at TPC Summerlin to shoot 11-under-par 60 Thursday in the first round of the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas.
Pampling, who was one of 12 players who got into the tournament because of a clerical error at PGA Tour headquarters, holed out from 134 yards for an eagle 2 on the par-4 sixth and tapped in for another eagle from six inches on the par-5 16th. In perfect conditions — sun-drenched skies and little wind — he added birdies on holes 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 and tied the course record set by J.J. Henry three years ago.
Pampling missed a 21-footer for birdie on the 17th and his bid for a 59 on the final hole from 12 feet just slid by.
LEADERBOARD:Shriners Hospitals for Children Open
“The putt on 17 just fell short in the jaws and on 18 I gave myself a bad read,” Pampling said after his lowest round on the PGA Tour since he shot 64 in the 2012 McGladrey Classic. “I thought it was straight, but it just had that little left to right. … I’ve been hitting it quite well for at least two or three months. I just haven’t been driving it super. And I had my coach come yesterday and we just fixed up a little bit of that. So that was good. And the irons were great. We hit a lot of close shots. It was just nice and solid. There was nothing that was extraordinary but it was just very good.”
Pampling wasn’t the only player running hot. John Huh and Brooks Koepka each shot 62 to stand two shots back, with Huh making five successive birdies at one point and Koepka had six 3’s, two 2’s and no 5’s on his card.
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Pampling, who has split his playing time on the PGA and Web.com tours since 2013, was fortunate to get into the Shriners. The tournament was moved to November from its usual October slot, and tournament officials requested the field be reduced to 132 players because of the shortened daylight. The Tour agreed but a clerical error inputting the change into the Tour’s computers occurred and no one was aware of the reduction. By the time the error was discovered, it was too late to reduce the field so it remained at 144.
“It was fun to put it together,” Pampling said of his game. “It had been there. It had been frustrating because I hadn’t been able to put the scores up there, but things went together, and now we just gotta do a bit more work and keep them going the next three days.”
Chip-in: Matt Kuchar will get a Cadillac after all.
On Thursday, tournament officials and Cadillac announced that Kuchar’s hole-in-one on the 17th hole in last week’s World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions in Shanghai earned him the vehicle.
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Initially, Kuchar was denied the prize because the tee on the hole had been moved to 193 yards due to course conditions — seven yards less than the 200-yard minimum required in the hole-in-one insurance rules. When Cadillac became aware of the situation, it decided to reward the ace.
“Certainly this is no longer the saddest hole-in-one of my life,” Kuchar said in a statement. “My 9-year-old son recently asked me if I’d ever made a hole-in-one to win a car, and I’ll be happy to now tell him that I have.”
Given the option to choose any car in the company’s lineup, Kuchar chose a 2017 Cadillac Escalade.