Red-hot Mahan opens with blistering 62  Special to PGATOUR.com MARKHAM, Ontario -- He's enjoying something of a breakthrough season on the PGA TOUR, but Hunter Mahan has never broken through in a round of golf quite like this before. The 25-year-old resident of Plano, Texas, made three eagles -- twice holing out from the fairway -- at Angus Glen North to open the Canadian Open presented by Franklin Templeton Investments with a 9-under-par 62, tying the lowest 18-hole score in the 103-year history of the world's third-oldest national open championship.  Hunter Mahan is looking for his second win of the 2007 season. (Getty Images)
"Crazy," Mahan said after taking an early two-stroke lead over Steve Allan. "Two hole-outs from the fairway. Things I've never done before. I played pretty solid other than that, so it was a good way to start the day." In the Canadian Open, which began in 1904, only three golfers previously shot 62, all at Glen Abbey, which will be the site of the 2008 Canadian Open. So Mahan joins Greg Norman (third round, 1986), Leonard Thompson (second round, 1981) and Andy Bean (final round, 1983) with 62s. The par was 72 when Norman did it and 71 when the other two men went so low. "To kind of have that mark, lowest round in the history of the tournament, that is pretty special, especially a tournament like this that's been around forever. That's kind of neat," said Mahan, who posted nines of 30 and 32, playing the back nine first at an Angus Glen North course affording what he called "perfect scoring conditions. The greens this morning were just perfect, true and fast. You can definitely score out there right now." He began with a birdie and eagled the par-5 11th hole with a 6-iron to 10 feet from 186 yards. Mahan added two more birdies and a bogey before jarring his 6-iron approach from 189 yards at the par-4 18th hole, which was playing 439 yards. "It was just about as perfect a shot as I could hit during a round of play,'' he described. "The pitch mark was about 6 inches from the hole, and it just kind of popped up and went straight in." On the front side, he negated two more birdies with a bogey until spinning in what he called "a flat sand wedge" from 81 yards at the 379-yard ninth hole. "I know I threw it up past the flag, took a little spin off and it spun right back in the hole," Mahan said. "I didn't see it go in, but I kind of heard the crowd kind of ooh and aah when it went in, and I was like, 'Wow, that's crazy. That doesn't happen.'" Mahan posted his first PGA TOUR victory earlier this year at the Travelers Championship in Hartford, where he also opened with a 62, although on a par-70 course. He shot 71 in the second round there but said the usual difficulty of following a low round with another low round isn't really something he needs to ponder. "I don't shoot many 62s. So it's not usually a big problem. But it's a good problem to have to come back for," Mahan said. "I just think it's kind of expectations from yourself and from everybody else. To do it the way I did today, to shoot a couple of eagles, I can't count on that again." Allan, who looked to share the first-round lead until Mahan's hole-out on his final shot of the day, said he was just happy to be playing, much less leading, any PGA TOUR tournament. "I've hardly been playing," he said. "It's been tough to get any momentum. I've only been able to get into 13 tournaments, and I haven't been able to make a big enough move to get myself established." He established himself early with a front nine of three-under-par 33, playing Angus Glen North's back side first. He followed that with a front nine of no-bogey, four-birdie 31, held together by a couple of dandy late par saves. |
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