Peter Malnati missed more cuts than he has made on the PGA Tour this season, but he got quite the confidence boost at the Rocket Classic.<\/p>\n
Malnati shot a career-best, nine-under 61 to tie a tournament record in the first round of the final Classic, 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,\u201d 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 has undergone a major 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\u2019s 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, who has won on the PGA Tour in 2024 and 2015. \u201cI played great.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n
Rickie Fowler and Ryan Gerard shot 63s, putting them two shots back and one stroke ahead of Patrick Cantlay and Patrick Fishburn.<\/p>\n
Michael Brennan surged up the leaderboard after starting two over through four holes with eight straight birdies \u2013 one shy of the PGA Tour record. He finished with a 65, putting him four strokes back with a pack of players that includes Keegan Bradley.<\/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 one-under 69 and US Open champion Wyndham Clark was one over.<\/p>\n
Cam Davis (68) is the leading Australian at two under, while Karl Vilips is a stroke behind and one ahead of Ryan Ruffels.<\/p>\n
The Classic and next week\u2019s Wyndham Championship are the last two tournaments left before the top 70 advance to the FedEx Cup post-season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peter Malnati missed more cuts than he has made on the PGA Tour this season, but he got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[459,1775,17327,8926,44,54,17531,144,8927],"class_list":["post-44723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-article","tag-australian-golf-digest","tag-cam-davis","tag-detroit-golf-club","tag-golf","tag-news","tag-peter-malnati","tag-pga-tour","tag-rocket-classic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44723","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=44723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}