NORTON, Mass. — Ryan Moore changed his schedule to pile up tournaments at the end of the year with hopes of getting into a rhythm going into the FedEx Cup playoffs.
He has no complaints with the results.
Moore backed up a good start to the playoffs with a 6-under 65 on Friday to share the first-round Deutsche Bank Championship lead with James Hahn on a day when hardly anyone seemed too far away. After one round at the TPC Boston, 37 players were separated by three shots.
Phil Mickelson would be an exception.
Mickelson, who leads the PGA Tour in adjusted scoring average and said he wanted to win the Vardon Trophy for the first time in his career, took two swipes out of high grass in a water hazard to no avail, finally took a drop and made a quadruple-bogey 8 on the sixth hole. That sent him to 75 and in third-to-last place.
Moore and Hahn played bogey-free on a breezy day that allowed for good scoring, even though no one went terribly low. They were one shot ahead of Paul Casey and Fabian Gomez. The average score was 69.67 as 80 of the 97 players in the field were at par or better.
As usual, there were Ryder Cup implications.
Jim Furyk, J.B. Holmes and Daniel Berger were in the group at 67, all of them to make an impression before Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III starts filling out the U.S. team with three picks in 10 days.
Holmes finished 10th in the standings, while Furyk was at No. 15 even though he four months recovering from wrist surgery.
Love has said every American in the Deutsche Bank Championship would be on his radar, though Moore isn’t even thinking about it.
LPGA: Marina Alex eagled her final hole for an 8-under 64 and the second-round lead in the LPGA Manulife Classic in Cambridge, Ontario.
Alex played the final five holes in 5 under for the lowest score in her LPGA Tour career, setting up the 18-foot eagle putt with a 5-wood approach on the par-5 ninth.
The 26-year-old former Vanderbilt player had a 10-under 134 total at Whistle Bear for a one-stroke lead over Thailand’s P.K. Kongkraphan and South Korea’s Hyo Joo Kim.
Second-ranked Ariya Jutanugarn was four strokes back after a 68 in her bid to win three straight events for the second time this season. Using a driver in competition for the second straight day after shelving it for months, the 20-year-old Thai player had an eagle, six birdies, two bogeys and a double bogey.
EUROPEAN TOUR: Tour newcomer Romain Langasque of France shot a 7-under 63 to share the lead after the second round at Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
The 21-year-old Langasque, playing only his fifth European Tour event, fired five birdies, an eagle-3 and no bogeys to move to 9 under alongside Richard Bland of England and Australian Richard Green, who had rounds of 64 and 66 respectively. .
CHAMPIONS TOUR: David Frost made two eagles and shot a bogey-free 8-under 62 to take the first-round lead in the PGA Tour Champions’ Shaw Charity Classic at Calgary, Alberta.
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