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The rain took some ferocity out of Quail Hollow Club, but the field still produced fireworks. …

McCarty’s magic: Recapping Round 1 of the Truist Championship

The first 50-footer Matt McCarty holed was a surprise. The second was a bonus. The third was historic. On a day that was dampened (literally) by a lengthy rain delay, McCarty’s putting performance was the bright spot on the dreary dregs.

McCarty shot 8-under 63 and leads by one stroke after 18 holes at the Truist Championship, almost solely because of what he did on Quail Hollow’s greens. Starting on the back nine, the one-time TOUR winner holed a 52-foot birdie at the 13th, a 59-foot birdie at the 16th and a 52-foot birdie at the 17th. In total, he made 220 feet of putts and led the field by a wide margin, gaining more than four strokes on the greens.

How rare was the performance? Well, McCarty…

• Became the first player in the ShotLink era to make three putts outside 50 feet in one round
• Set the record for most feet of putts made at Quail Hollow (more than 23 feet more than the next best)
• Set the record for most feet of putts on any nine holes at Quail Hollow (187' 5")
• Made the most feet of putts in a single round on TOUR in 2026
• Made the eighth-most feet of putts in a single round in the ShotLink era
• For good measure, McCarty birdied his last three holes (two of which came on putts inside 3 feet), to take the lead outright.

It’s foolish to expect McCarty to replicate the putting performance, but it would be no surprise to see him stay atop the leaderboard. He’s improved gradually this year, pulling closer to win No. 2 with each successive start. In his last four starts, he’s finished: T24-T12-T10-T9.

“Honestly, this year I feel like I haven't been able to pop the top off it any round so far,” McCarty said.

That finally happened on Thursday.

Playing through

• 🫢 From my colleague Sean Martin, who is on-site ... Rory McIlroy almost made a bit of history, but not the good kind. ...
• 📺 Catch up on the Round 1 highlights ...
• 🌴Martin Laird leads in Myrtle Beach. Brooks Koepka is four shots back …

Who needs a win?

As the rain poured down at Quail Hollow Club, delaying the start of the Truist Championship, my mind wandered.

The headlines this week were dominated by the return of Rory McIlroy, who is making his first start since the Masters, and whether recent winners Cameron Young and Matt Fitzpatrick will maintain form into major No. 2. But it’s around this point in this season I begin to scroll further down the FedExCup and Official World Golf Ranking and start questioning what’s going on below the first few names. And with a couple of hours to kill this morning, I started pondering the question: who needs a win this week most?

There are obvious answers like Tony Finau, who can only qualify for his 12th straight PGA Championship next week by winning. Or Keegan Bradley, who is still trying to shake off his Ryder Cup defeat. There’s a large group of unheralded players still searching for win No. 1, like Kristoffer Reitan and Sudarshan Yellamaraju, who would benefit massively with a victory.

But I kept coming back to Xander Schauffele. A win wouldn’t change his career, but it would certainly alter his current trajectory, which has been stunted since a rib injury derailed him when he was at his peak – just before the 2025 season. Since that injury, Schauffele has won once (last year’s Baycurrent Classic), but has slowly dropped from the world’s No. 2 player to one bouncing in and out of the top 10. That’s not a massive drop, but it’s a meaningful one. Coming off his two major victories in 2024, there was a legitimate argument to be made that Schauffele was better than Scheffler. Now there’s no debate.

Schauffele called 2025 the worst season of his career. He failed to qualify for the TOUR Championship for the first time since he joined the TOUR. And in 2026, despite several strong results, he’s largely been a non-factor as tournaments hang in the balance on Sunday afternoon. That’s where Schauffele expects to be, and he hasn’t met his expectations.

That was the context in which I watched Schauffele on Thursday. He was having another solid day, a 2-under through 17 holes, when play was called. He’s in the top 20 after the first round for the sixth time this season. He’s played this course remarkably well before, twice finishing runner-up.

This should be the week he pops. With a big event on the horizon next week, and two more to follow in the next two months, he needs to flash soon.

Parting shots

• 🐯 As mentioned above, Tony Finau’s only path to the PGA Championship is by winning this week. He’s off to a solid start with a 4-under 67.
• 🌧️ Quail Hollow soaked up 2.2 inches of rain overnight and into Thursday morning, changing the complexion of the first round with drastically different conditions than players had prepped for. The Charlotte area had not received more than 2 inches of rain in total over the last two months.
• 🤕 Great starts for both Sungjae Im (7-under thru 17) and Justin Thomas (3-under thru 17). Both have struggled to reacclimate after injuries sidelined them to start the year. Maybe the tides are turning?
• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Alex Fitzpatrick continues to impress in his early days as a TOUR member, quickly quieting any criticism of how he earned his card. He finished ninth in Miami last week and is back inside the top 10 in Charlotte.