{"id":44577,"date":"2026-07-30T22:47:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:47:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/44577\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T22:47:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:47:12","slug":"peter-malnati-shoots-9-under-61-takes-early-lead-in-8th-and-final-rocket-classic-in-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/44577\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter Malnati shoots 9-under 61, takes early lead in 8th and final Rocket Classic in Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"

DETROIT \u2013 Peter Malnati<\/a> has missed more cuts than he has made on the PGA Tour this season, filling his head with doubts about his game.<\/p>\n

He just got quite a confidence boost.<\/p>\n

Malnati shot a career-best, 9-under 61 to tie a tournament record in the first round of the final Rocket Classic<\/a>, giving him a two-shot lead.<\/p>\n

When Malnati stood on the first tee, his caddie suggested leaving the driver in his bag to play it safe and set up a solid start.<\/p>\n

Malnati, though, went against the advice and used his driver to put a tee shot in the middle of the fairway that set up his first of seven birdies on the front nine.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven in the beginning before I knew it was going to be a special day, I didn\u2019t feel the same level of like anxiety,” he said.<\/p>\n

With thoughts of a sub-60 round crossing his mind, he made a 55-foot putt for birdie at No. 11 and was nine under through 13 holes before missing some putts down the stretch in a bogey-free round.<\/p>\n

Detroit Golf Club underwent a $16 million renovation, including converting a couple of par-5 holes into par 4s and adding a lot of bunkers, in an attempt to restore Donald Ross\u2019 vision for it more than a century ago, while making it more challenging.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I took advantage of a super easy course,\u201d said the 39-year-old Malnati<\/a>, who has won on the PGA Tour in 2024 and 2015. \u201cI played great.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wasn’t alone.<\/p>\n

Rickie Fowler and Ryan Gerard shot 63s, putting them two shots back and one stroke ahead of Patrick Cantlay<\/a> and Patrick Fishburn.<\/p>\n

Michael Brennan surged up the leaderboard after starting 2 over through four holes with eight straight birdies \u2014 one shy of the PGA Tour record<\/a>. He finished with a 65, putting him four strokes back with a pack of players that includes Keegan Bradley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite significant changes at the course, Malnati and many other players still went low at a tournament that has been a birdie fest since 2019, when a Detroit-based mortgage company ended a decade-long drought in Michigan without a PGA Tour stop that dated to Tiger Woods<\/a> winning the last Buick Open.<\/p>\n

The PGA Tour<\/a> is moving to a new model for 2028, effectively creating two tours and Detroit organizers are taking an exit. The Rocket Classic wasn’t interested in continuing to spend $15 million a year to be part of the second tier and didn’t want to double the costs to be part of the elite tier.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely been a bummer to kind of come into this knowing it was the last one,\u201d said Fowler, a Rocket Mortgage spokesman and the tournament’s 2023 champion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Malnati will have to hold off a field that is stronger than usual in Detroit.<\/p>\n

Some of the top players in the field, though, did not get off to a good start. Cameron Young, the No. 3 player in the world, shot a 1-under 69 and U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark was 1 over.<\/p>\n

The Rocket Classic and next week’s Wyndham Championship are the last two tournaments left before the top 70 advances to the FedEx Cup postseason.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP golf: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/golf<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 Peter Malnati has missed more cuts than he has made on the PGA Tour this season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44578,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[685,5905,1511,3265,17531,208,56,1142,424,1401],"class_list":["post-44577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-xander-schauffele","tag-cameron-young","tag-donald-ross","tag-hideki-matsuyama","tag-jackson-koivun","tag-peter-malnati","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-sports","tag-tiger-woods","tag-wyndham-clark","tag-xander-schauffele"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}