Cap Cana Championship: Round 1 notebook
Weather: Sunny, humid and hot with temperatures in the mid-80s and a heat index in the mid-90s. Winds from the ESE at 5-15 mph.
• For the first time in the three-year Cap Cana Championship history, a pair of players share the first-round lead and the 6-under 66s posted by both Chip Beck and Nick Price today are the lowest opening-round scores in tournament annals. Making his first start of the 2010 campaign this week, Beck's 66 was his first sub-70 score on the Jack Nicklaus Course at Punta Espada Golf Club in his third appearance at this event. This was his best round on the Champions Tour since posting 66 in Round 1 of the 2008 AT&T Championship in San Antonio.
• Today marks the third time in his Champions Tour career that Chip Beck has been tied for the opening-round lead in a Champions Tour event. He was tied after play ended on Friday at the 2008 Walmart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach and then later that same season at the 2008 SAS Championship. Price, of South Africa, had the best score among the 14 international players in this weeks' field. Overall, not including the United States contingent, 10 different countries are represented in this week's tournament. Price has now been either leading or tied for the lead after Round 1 of a Champions Tour event five times. The last time he was in front after Round 1 was at the 2009 3M Championship.
• Fred Couples heads a large group of players one stroke back of Beck and Price. Couples got off to a good start in his quest to not only win his third consecutive Champions Tour start, but also claim a third official title in only his fourth career appearance on the circuit, something that's never been done before in Champions Tour history. Couples' bogey-free 5-under 67 today was his 10th straight round in the 60s on the Champions Tour, the most consecutive sub-70 rounds ever posted by a player starting his rookie season (previous best -- Dale Douglass (1986), 4 straight sub-70 scores). Couples has now played his last 44 holes without a bogey and is also a cumulative 61-under-par for his brief Champions Tour career. Earlier this season, Couples won the ACE Group Classic and Toshiba Classic after finishing second to Tom Watson in his senior debut at the MasterCard Championship at Hualalai.
• With ideal scoring conditions, there were a whopping 21 rounds below 70 today compared to just seven sub-70 scores on Friday last year and only three rounds in the 60s at the inaugural event at Punta Espada Golf Club in 2008. The field averaged 71.705 compared to 72.95 on Friday last year and 74.68 in the first round of the 2008 tournament. The most difficult hole was the par-3 16th (3.231), yielding just two birdies (Bernhard Langer, Tim Simpson). The easiest hole was the par-5 15th, giving up 44 birdies amongst the 78-player field.
• Trevor Dodds of Namibia, the winner of the 1998 Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic on the PGA TOUR and three other Nationwide Tour events, carded a 2-under 70 in his Champions Tour debut today. Dodds got into this week's field via the open qualifier last week in Orlando. Jay Overton, the Director of Golf at the Punta Cana properties in the Dominican Republic, got into the event on a sponsor exemption and carded a 6-over 78. Overton was making his first start on the Champions Tour since the 2006 Senior PGA Championship. He was a regular on the Champions Tour from 2001-2004 .
• There were six bogey-free rounds today (Fred Couples, Olin Browne, David Peoples, Tom Pernice, Jr., Bob Tway, Dan Forsman)...Defending champion Keith Fergus opened with a 1-under 71 today (T32) while Mark Wiebe, the first winner of the Cap Cana Championship in 2008, carded a 2-under 70 (T22).
• Bob Gilder made his 149th consecutive start that he's been eligible for and opened with a 4-under-par 68. The last time Gilder missed an event he was eligible to play in was the 2004 Greater Hickory Classic at Rock Barn.
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