Steve Stricker has played at Akron’s Firestone Country Club several times throughout the years. He’s won at the course twice, taking home the Kaulig Companies Championship in both 2023 and 2021 (when it was the Bridgestone Senior PLAYERS Championship). He’s a seven-time major winner on the PGA Tour Champions circuit. He’s routinely considered one of the favorites to win on a week-to-week basis.
Retief Goosen is a World Golf Hall of Fame member with 39 career wins to his name across various tours in his career. He’s a two-time major championship winner on the regular circuit and a one-time major champion on the PGA Tour Champions. That major win came at Firestone Country Club back in 2019, the first year of the Bridgestone Senior PLAYERS Championship.
Vijay Singh, like Goosen, is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. In his career on the PGA Tour he won 34 times – and boasts 66 total career victories while including other tours – and spent time as the No. 1 golfer in the world, wrestling that honor away from Tiger Woods in September of 2004, ending Woods 264-week streak as the top-ranked golfer in the world. Four years after that, Singh won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone.
Those three all have had success at Firestone, and were grouped together for the first round on Thursday afternoon.
“Yeah, very cool,” Stricker says when asked about playing with other past winners at Firestone. “And we all got off to a good start, too. We all birdied the first hole. I think we all birdied the second hole. It was fun to play with those guys, Hall of Fame guys, friends throughout the years. We played a lot of golf together and have seen each other a lot over the years, so it was a good grouping.”
Stricker was the best of the bunch, turning in a 4-under 66 scorecard, leaving him tied for first heading into the second round on Friday.
Singh played well before trouble with trees on two of the final three holes of the day put a damper on his trek around a soft course. His finish of bogey, birdie and double bogey on the last three holes pushed him down to tied for 10th at 1-under.
Goosen faced similar struggles to Singh down the stretch, but found less success earlier in his round. He enters Friday tied for 47th at 3-over par.
That group of Firestone champions will play again on Friday in the second round, teeing off the 10th hole at 10:31 a.m.
A new twist on a familiar course
Several of the players in this 78-player field have quite a bit of experience at Firestone Country Club. That leads to familiarity, as the course hasn’t changed significantly over the years.
“To me it's always the same. The golf course, it never changes,” Kenny Perry says after his round. “That's what's great about this place, it doesn't throw you any curveballs. You kind of know what to expect, know how to kind of prepare for this place when you're coming in.”
Sure, there are times when the course will play more firm than others, and Thursday may have been on the damper side due to rain on Tuesday and Wednesday, but for the most part the golfers know what to expect.
Thursday’s curveball for the field was how the wind impacted things.
“Wind was a little bit out of the northwest, which has been different than the practice rounds,” Stricker says. “There were some holes that definitely played longer, 18, nine, the holes that all came back this way towards the clubhouse, eight. Yeah, and if you didn't hit the fairway, you're back there a long ways. So you really had to get it in the fairway or first cut or something like that on some of the holes, but yeah, it was a challenge. Scores aren't great. As always around here, it's tough to get it going a lot under par, but I'm happy with what I did.”
He wasn’t the only one that felt that during the round.
“The northwest wind is kind of different, usually we get a south, south-southwest. The northwest, like eight and nine, you turn into eight and nine it's into the wind, 16 and 18 are into the wind. Makes those holes play very difficult,” Perry says. “We normally play a south wind here, so that was different. But 10, 11, 12 were straight downwind and I opened up birdie, birdie, birdie right out of the gate. Then I birdied the other ones, 13, 14, it's downwind, so I was able to get the downwind holes. When you turn back into the wind, they play hard.”
The second round of the Kaulig Companies Championship begins Friday morning at 10:10 a.m.
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