Warren, Sutherland share lead before record opening-day crowd
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- A broken 9-iron didn't prevent Kevin Sutherland from grabbing a share of the opening-round lead of the FBR Open.
Sutherland broke the shaft of the club swinging it into a cactus, then made a call to the local Ping representative for a replacement.
FBR Open Leaderboard
T-1. Warren (-6)
T-1. Sutherland (-6)
T-3.
Gay (-5)
T-3. Villegas (-5)
T-3. Beem (-5)
T-3. O'Hern (-5)
"I was kind of half expecting it would be coming tomorrow," he said, "but it showed up six holes later, which is pretty amazing."
Playing the back nine first, Sutherland used the 9-iron for a birdie on the ninth, his final hole, to move into a tie with Charles Warren for the lead at 6-under-par 65.
Phil Mickelson overcame a pair of early bogeys on par-5 holes and was in a group of 19 three shots back at 3-under 68 on the 7,216-yard desert layout.
Warren played a bogey-free round of 6-under 65 early in the day, then Sutherland birdied the final two holes, the last with a 24-foot putt, in the twilight.
Brian Gay, Rich Beem, Camilo Villegas and Charlie Wi were one shot back at 5-under 66. Six were two shots behind at 4-under 67.
With a 31-degree temperature at sunrise, a 90-minute frost delay Friday postponed completion of the first round by the 24 golfers still on the course when play was suspended by darkness on Thursday. The first round finally was concluded at 12:21 p.m. ET.
The chilly weather Thursday didn't stop revelers from streaming to the most raucous stop on the PGA Tour. The turnout of 83,657 was an opening-round record.
Crowds should only get bigger until peaking on Saturday, when more than 150,000 are expected. Partly because of the thousands in town for the Super Bowl, tournament officials say there's a good chance that overall attendance will top the record of 536,767 set in 2006.
The start of the tournament was delayed for 30 minutes because of frost on the TPC layout in north Scottsdale, some 50 miles east of the site of Sunday's big football game. It was 35 degrees when the first group teed off.
Gay, in the third group to start, used a hand warmer and wore mittens between shots on the first few holes.
"It was freezing this morning," he said. "Being a Florida guy, I don't like the cold very much. My fingers were a little numb, toes were a little numb, but I hung in there early and kept the momentum going."
The temperature climbed into the mid-50s later but seemed warmer because of the sunshine.
Sutherland, the 2002 World Match Play champion who lives in Sacramento, Calif., broke his 9-iron swinging it into a cactus on 13, his fourth hole.
After his ball landed near the cactus, he got permission from an official to wrap a towel around his leg to keep from being stuck by the cactus on the follow-through. He never thought about possible damage to the club.
"I didn't really hit the cactus that hard," he said, "but that stuff is so sturdy and thick that in hindsight it never really had a chance."
He needed the club on the very next hole, but had to make do with an 8-iron.
"It's an amazing story," Sutherland said.
Warren, of Greenville, S.C., has never won on the PGA Tour. His best finish was second at last year's Reno-Tahoe Open. The 32-year-old played in the same group as the colorful Villegas, a Colombian heartthrob known as "Spider-Man" for the way he sprawls on the green to line up putts.
"As soon as I knew I had drawn him, I definitely knew that we would probably have decent sized gallery following us," Warren said. "He seems to bring all the young people out, that's for sure."
Villegas has two second-place PGA Tour finishes, one of them as a tour rookie at the FBR Open in 2006. The 26-year-old Colombian finished last year with three top-10 finishes.
Villegas said a golfer has to tune out all that's going on around him to succeed in the tournament's party atmosphere.
"Well, there's a lot going on outside the ropes, like everybody knows," he said, "and you're going to get good comments and you're going to get bad comments. The fans have been awesome to me the last two times I've played here. But you've got to have hard skin because the bad comments are going to sneak over there."
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
