First round: Leader Villegas continues Playoffs hot streak
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Camilo Villegas and Steve Stricker were excited to be playing golf Friday for different reasons, and it showed during a soggy start to the BMW Championship.
Villegas, coming off a tie for third last week that allowed him to advance in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup, continued his good form with eight birdies on long, soft Bellerive Country Club for a 5-under 65 that gave him a one-shot lead.
The 26-year-old Colombian believes winning is a process, and it appears to be accelerating with each round.
"Sometimes you really want to be on the golf course and it's going great, and sometimes it's a grind," Villegas said. "You've got to be ready for both. I'm excited right now. I feel really good about by golf."
Stricker made a 35-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole for a 4-under 66, tied with Kenny Perry, Tim Herron, Stuart Appleby and Andres Romero.
The smile on his face had more to do with the putt.
His stomach has been churning the last month during what felt like an audition for the Ryder Cup. Stricker, who was bumped out of automatic qualifying at the PGA Championship, began sweating over every poor shot, every missed putt, and he only exhaled Monday night when U.S. captain Paul Azinger told him he was being selected.
The burden lifted, he played some of his most relaxed golf of the year.
"It was a lot different than the last two weeks," Stricker said. "I did feel a little more at ease. I didn't feel as much pressure on every shot. I felt a lot more relaxed."
PGA TOUR officials breathed easy, too.
The first round Thursday was postponed because of 3 inches of rain that about turned Bellerive into a water park. The forecast called for the storm to pass in the afternoon, but it stubbornly stayed through Friday morning, with a light rain as players warmed up on the range.
Even so, Bellerive was in decent shape. Some tees were moved forward, and hole locations were on high ground. Players were able to lift, clean and place their golf balls through the fairway. And while the course played every bit of its 7,324 yards, firing at the flags was merely target practice.
Thirty-six players in the 69-man field man field broke par, a group that did not include Vijay Singh, winner of the first two events in the finale for the FedExCup.
Singh remains virtually a lock unless someone close in the standings wins the last two events. But he hardly looked like the guy who won a playoff at The Barclays and closed with a 63 to win the Deutsche Bank Championship.
He missed putts that had been going in from everywhere. Trying to putt with the blade of his sand wedge through the first cut of rough on the par-3 sixth, he stubbed the shot and took bogey. With a wedge in his hand, he came up 20 yards short of his mark and flipped his club to the ground.
Singh still wound up with a 70.
"It's not an easy golf course," he said. "The greens were slower than what we practiced on."
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| Thursday's Best |
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The par-5, 610-yard eighth hole played 0.449 strokes under par and was the easiest on Friday.
The par-4, 505-yard 10th was the toughest on Friday with a 4.435 scoring average.
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Based on this highlight, it's no surprise that Camilo Villegas is in the lead. His 120-yard approach shot on the par-4 seventh hole landed just an inch from the cup and nearly went in. 
For the second straight year, Camilo Villegas fired a 65 in the first round of the BMW Championship. He logged eight birdies and three bogeys to take the lead. | QUOTE OF THE DAY | ||
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PERRY LOOKING FOR A LITTLE MORE MAGIC
By Helen Ross, PGATOUR.COM Chief of Correspondents
ST. LOUIS -- That Tiger Woods fellow wouldn't be playing any more, so Kenny Perry entered the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup effectively leading the standings.
At the midway point of the Playoffs, though, Perry likely needs to win this week's BMW Championship -- as well as the finale at East Lake -- to earn that $10 million FedExCup bonus that would cover a lot of greens fees back home at Country Creek, the municipal course he built in Franklin, Tenn.
That's how volatile these Playoffs have been.
An admittedly streaky player, Perry hasn't been able to maintain the level of play that staked him to three wins in five starts earlier this summer. He tied for 48th and 80th in the first two Playoffs events and has tumbled down to seventh in the standings.
Meanwhile, Vijay Singh has played like Perry was -- winning three of his last five starts, including both of the first two Playoff events, to take over the No. 1 spot. He owns a 16,786-point advantage over Perry, as a result.
"I've got to do the magic to win," Perry acknowledged. "I've got to win this week and the following week to win (the FedExCup). That's hard to do out here. Guys are good. You've got to think about it, I've only won 12 times my whole career. It's hard for me to get one win, much less two in a row.
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SATURDAY WON'T BE A WALK IN THE PARK
By Mike McAllister, PGATOUR.COM Managing Editor
ST. LOUIS -- Thirty-six holes loom on Saturday. Thirty-six holes on a golf course that measures nearly 7,400 yards and will be even longer if the wet conditions make your feet heavy on the zoysia fairways and slow you down. Thirty-six holes in a pressure-packed situation of the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup. It won't be a Saturday stroll.
As a result, some players at the BMW Championship will bring an extra shirt, perhaps an extra pair of socks when they show up bright and early in the morning. Others will make sure they carry extra snacks. You can bet almost everyone will get extra sleep Friday night.
But what about an extra caddie?
"It's going to be a tough walk for the caddies," Ernie Els said. "We'll be fine, but it's a long walk for those guys."
It's going to be a long day for everybody when the second round at Bellerive cranks up at 7 a.m. Saturday. Because of the rain that wiped out Thursday's play and pushed the first round to Friday, tournament officials decided to play 36 holes on Saturday in order to get back on schedule.
Since the BMW Championship field consists of just 69 players, it won't be as long a day had it been the first two rounds of a regular TOUR event, with 144 players trying to cram 36 holes into a single day. Unless it rains -- and the forecast indicates that it won't -- then the players shouldn't have to race to squeeze in their final putts before the last ray of sunlight disappears.
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FACTS AND STATS: MORE ON VILLEGAS, ROMERO
Compiled by Elias Sports Bureau, Inc.
• Camilo Villegas leads after the conclusion of the first round of the BMW Championship. This is the second first-round lead of Villegas' career. The two tournaments in which Villegas has led after the first round have both been events in the PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup: last year's Deutsche Bank Championship and this year's BMW Championship. He becomes the first player to be the first-round leader twice in a FedExCup Playoffs event.
| 1 | As in number of players -- Dudley Hart -- who managed a bogey-free round on Friday. |
| 1 | Also, how many eagles were logged in the first round. Dean Wilson had the only one on No. 12. |
| 10 | How many rounds Bubba Watson scored par or better before his PGA TOUR-leading streak was snapped with Friday's 72. |
• Camilo Villegas had a streak of four consecutive birdies from the 5th through the 8th hole in the first round of the BMW Championship. This ties the third-longest birdie streak of his career. In the first round of the 2004 B.C. Open and the second round of this year's British Open Championship, Villegas had streaks of five consecutive birdies.
• Camilo Villegas had a streak of 7 straight holes without a par from the 5th through the 11th hole in the first round of the BMW Championship. This is the longest streak of his career in one round of a PGA TOUR Event.
• Andres Romero shot a 66 in the first round of the BMW Championship and is one back of the leader. The only two times he has shot a lower score was in the third round of this year's PGA Championship and the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, which he went on to win.
SINGH'S OFF DAY WITH THE FLATSTICK
The man who has convinced himself he's the best putter in the world struggled on the greens Friday during the first round of the BMW Championship.
Vijay Singh may have taken 32 putts, but he still managed to shoot even par and will start Saturday's 36-hole marathon five strokes off the lead held by Camilo Villegas. And Singh, who has won the last two Playoff events, was hardly running up the white flag.
The smooth-swinging Fijian knew that a Bellerive track still soggy after torrential rains Thursday forced postponement of the first round would present a challenge.
"The fairways are so perfect and they moved the tees up, so you've got to watch how we place our ball," Singh said. "The ball rolls off the club face a lot, and most of our shots were coming up short. That's one thing you have to take into account. The zoysia grass is different than what we played last week.
"The golf course is playing well. It's going to dry out, and it's not going to be easy from here on. I think they're going to toughen the pin placements. The tees were all forward today, so they're going to move back now, so it's going to play extremely difficult tomorrow."
Singh made three birdies and a trio of bogeys Friday. He only hit 11 fairways and missed five greens, though, which contributed to the rather quiet performance.
"You'd better place your drive very well, otherwise it's hard to get close to the hole,'" Singh said. "The greens were slow, so you had to make sure you hit your putts hard enough. I played okay, even par, three days to go, so a long way before this tournament is over.'
Sergio Garcia, who lost to Singh in a playoff at The Barclays and tied for fifth last week, has played with his friend quite a bit of late. Garcia been paired with Singh in four of the last five rounds, including Friday when the Spaniard shot 2 under.
"Obviously he didn't hit the ball as well as he's been hitting it the last couple weeks, either," Garcia said. "He had a couple loose shots here and there, a couple of pulls that obviously he didn't hit in the past few weeks.
"But it's one of those things that happens. It just comes and goes."
STRICKER + PLAYOFFS = SUCCESS
Steve Stricker has never finished outside of the top 20 in a PGA TOUR Playoffs for the FedExCup event. Last year, he finished first at The Barclays, tied for ninth at the Deutsche Bank Championship, third at the BMW Championship and tied for 17th at THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola.
He has tie for 19th and tie for 13th finishes under his belt so far this year. With a 4-under 66 on Friday, he is now a collective 66-under par in Playoff events.
Even he can't exactly explain it, but he does have an idea what led to Friday's 66.
"I don't know. It's the playoffs," Stricker said. "I don't know. You know, obviously I've been working hard trying to get on this Ryder Cup team so I've been putting a lot of time in trying to get my game going in anticipation of hopefully being on the team so I could -- so I've been working hard at that. Then finally when I got the call there last week, it just was like a huge weight had been lifted off."
THINGS TO WATCH ON SATURDAY
1. All 36 holes. For the first time since the 2005 INTERNATIONAL, the entire field will play 36 holes in one day. First-round leader Camilo Villegas isn't worried -- "It is what it is. You're here to play a golf tournament, to do your best to win a golf tournament, and if you've got to play 36 holes tomorrow, you've got to play 36 holes tomorrow."
2. Tim Clark. Clark is looking for his first win on the PGA TOUR and he's got two things going for him: 1. Bellerive Country Club has hosted two major championships and both have been won by golfers hailing from southern Africa (Nick Price and Gary Player). Clark is from South Africa as well. 2. He's also the TOUR's all-time leading money winner out of players who haven't won.
3. Chez Reavie. The rookie already has one victory this season and he's tied for seventh after the first round. At No. 54 in the FedExCup points list, though, Reavie needs a solid finish this week to advance to THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola.
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