Darren Clarke remains quietly-confident of taking the sting out of the Copperhead course despite being bitten on day one of the Valspar Championship at Tampa Bay, Florida.
Clarke was sharing the lead when he turned over a 5-iron second shot into rough at the 12th to eventually walk off with a double bogey along with a bogey at the last on route to carding a level par 71.
It is Clarke’s first appearance in the $US 5.7m event and while disappointed the former British Open champion still walked from the course with a lot of positives.
Darren Clarke remains intent on taking sting out of Copperhead course despite being bitten on first day of Valspar Championship.
“I just made a couple of poor swings on the 12th hole and while it always leaves a sour taste in your mouth to bogey the 18th from the middle of the fairway so apart from that overall I am very happy,” he said.
“So looking back I hit a lot of good shots and on a golf course I am playing for a first time in competition.
“It also wasn’t easy out there and it was also very cold, and very unlike south-west Florida, and the course also is not like what you would find in Florida and more like the golf courses you would find up north in states like North Carolina.
“That caught me out a few times today with not having played here before and while my practice rounds were good, I had a few shots to different parts of the fairway that I didn’t do in my practice rounds so all of sudden my lines were different.
“So I’m confident of playing a whole lot better with this first round out of the way.”
Padraig Harrington also ended his round with a bogey for a four over par 75 and his poorest score in 11 rounds of the Copperhead course.
It is also 14 shots more than the course record 61 Harrington posted on day one in his last Tampa appearance two years ago.
And Harrington’s post Pro-Am fear on Wednesday of having wasted all his birdies in shooting a six-under par 65 came back to haunt him with the triple Major winning managing just one birdie and that was holing a 14-yard bunker shot at his penultimate hole, the par three, 8th.
“I just didn’t hole enough birdies today,” he said.
“It was just a tough day and I didn’t make anything happen and I did the opposite to what I did yesterday in the Pro-am, and that’s what I was worried about.
“The good thing is that no one has run away this first day and the board is pretty bunched but I just need to make more birdies, more birdies.
“While it was nice to hole that bunker shot at the eighth, it was poor finish dropping one at the last after a careless, careless chip.”
Four players – the American duo of Matt Every and Pat Perez along with Australian left-hander Greg Chalmers and Korean-born New Zealander share the lead very late in the day at three under .
Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts is well placed at two under par.
