Furyk off to fast start at Tour Championship

2008-09-25

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ATLANTA (Ticker)—Jim Furyk clinched the Ryder Cup for the United States last week, and he offered up a pretty good encore performance early in the first round at the Tour Championship on Thursday.

Furyk holed out with his second shot from 120 yards to eagle the par-4 first hole at East Lake.

That was enough to give him a share of the early lead at 2-under with Ryder Cup teammate Phil Mickelson, who had completed four holes.

Play began just before noon local time in glorious autumn conditions, although a testing breeze sprang up in the early afternoon, providing an exacting test for the 30-man field.

If the early going was any indication, there were likely to be few players under par at day’s end.

Among those to falter early were South African Tim Clark, who was 6-over after nine holes, while Japan’s Ryuji Imada and American Ken Duke were 4-over after nine and eight holes, respectively.

Sergio Garcia, the only member of the losing European Ryder Cup team entered here, made a poor start with a bogey at the first hole, where he three-putted from 45 feet after his first putt from above the hole trickled 10 feet beyond.

The Tour Championship is the final tournament in the four-event PGA Tour FedEx Cup playoff series.

This event was supposed to bring about an exciting conclusion in the race for the playoff champion, but Vijay Singh took care of that by winning the first two playoff events.

Singh needs only to complete 72 holes here to win the FedEx Cup championship and secure the $10 million prize.

The tournament also offers a separate purse of $7 million, so there’s still plenty of incentive for the rest of the field.

It is the second year in a row that the playoff winner has been all but decided before the Tour Championship; Tiger Woods won the FedEx Cup last year.

The event is missing the past four winners - Woods (2007), Adam Scott (2006), Bart Bryant (2005) and Retief Goosen (2004).