Two PGA Tour major winners are among a group of four players who shot a 4-under-par 68 on Friday to finish tied atop the leaderboard after one round of the PGA Tour Champions’ SAS Championship in Cary, N.C.
And none of them finished hotter than Stewart Cink, who finished with three consecutive birdies and played the back nine in 4-under 37 at Prestonwood Country Club.
Ireland’s Padraig Harrington wasn’t as clean as Cink down the stretch, bogeying the par-4 15th before getting that shot back with a birdie on the par-5 17th. Those two are joined by Chad Campbell and Sweden’s Robert Karlsson in first place, one shot better than a trio of golfers.
The SAS Championship is the final event before the Champions’ three-event playoff to determine the winner of the Charles Schwab Cup. The top 72 players in the Charles Schwab Cup points standings after this weekend will advance to the first playoff event, the Dominion Energy Charity Classic next weekend in Richmond, Va.
Cink and Harrington combined to win The Open Championship in three consecutive years, with Harrington winning it 2007 and ’08 before Cink won it in 2009 in a famed playoff with then-59-year-old Tom Watson.
Echoing the sentiments of most of the field, Harrington quickly pointed out the biggest challenge on the course: the greens.