Xander Schauffele steals show as Valhalla crowds flock to see Justin Thomas, Tiger Woods
When the tee times for the first round of the 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club were announced Tuesday, it was easy to see where the most fan attention would be directed.
Teeing off in back-to-back groups were Louisville native and two-time PGA Championship winner Justin Thomas and golfing legend Tiger Woods. Neither golfer is currently operating at the peak of his career, but they were still certain to attract the largest crowds in Louisville.
Fans who showed up to follow the groups teeing off just before 8 a.m. were not disappointed, but both Thomas and Woods took a back seat in performance at least to Xander Schauffele, who tied a major championship record by shooting a 62 while playing in the same group as Thomas. The performance marked just the fourth time — including once previously by Schauffele — someone had shot a 62 in a major.
“It’s a great start to a big tournament,” Schauffele said. “One I’m obviously always going to take, but it’s just Thursday.”
Thomas shot a 2-under-par 69. Woods finished the first round with a 1-over-par 72.
In Valhalla’s third turn hosting the PGA Championship, Thomas earned the chance to play his first major tournament in his hometown. He could relate to the throngs of fans following Woods throughout the course since he was among them as a 7-year-old during Woods’ win in the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla.
“The Kentucky/Louisville sports fans, they’re sports fans and we don’t get golf tournaments really ever, let alone major championships,” Thomas said Tuesday. “And when it comes here I think you see that with some other Midwest venues, that they love it. Just the energy was crazy that week (in 2000) and just hearing the roars in person. You’re on one side of the course, you hear it on another side of the course. Or maybe I’m inside and I could hear it wherever it was going on.
“As a 7-year-old, that’s pretty cool to hear in person. You think you can do anything when you’re that age, but watching Tiger and Bob May duel it out and how it all ended and me being a Tiger fan that I was, it was about as perfect of a week as I could have imagined. … Not that you know what you want to do when you’re 7 years old, but I had a pretty good idea that I wanted to play golf.”
The round began slowly for Thomas. After starting on the back nine, he hit the turn at even-par but began to build some momentum with back-to-back birdies on four and five. A bogie followed on six before two more birdies on seven and eight.
Playing in the group behind Thomas and Schauffele, Woods was 1-over-par at the turn. Birdies on three and seven appeared to build momentum, but he closed his round with back-to-back three-puts for bogies on eight and nine.
“It’s hard to not get ahead of yourself,” Thomas said. “I feel like I kind of did it after hitting those two birdies in a row. I’ve got four holes left, and I was like, ‘This is a chance for me to birdie three of these last four.’
“... I feel like I didn’t play bad, but I didn’t play great by any means.”
Thomas has not won a tournament since his 2022 PGA Championship win at Southern Hills. The former world-No. 1 entered this week ranked 31st.
A series of injuries have robbed Woods of his former dominance — the most recent of his 15 major wins came in 2019 — and he is playing in just his eighth tournament in the last three seasons.
“I am getting stronger, for sure, but I just don’t play a whole lot of competitive rounds,” Woods said. “It’s a bit different than being home.”
While no one will confuse Woods’ current form for the way he was playing in his 2000 win at Valhalla, the crowd following him Tuesday remained so large that many in it were unable to even see Woods on the course.
Woods’ opening round was reminiscent of his Master’s performance in April in which he played the first two rounds at 1-over to make the cut. The physical toll of playing a full tournament seemed to catch up with Woods that weekend though, as he ended with his worst score as a professional (16-over 304) and in last place among the golfers that made the cut.
With Schauffele and others having no trouble posting low scores Thursday, Woods will need a strong showing Friday to keep playing on the weekend. But for at least one more day, the largest crowd at Valhalla figures to be close to him again.
“I think that I appreciate it more now,” Woods said of the crowds following him this week. “Just the fact that I don’t come out here very often. I don’t play much, and I’m at home where it’s quiet and it’s so different to coming out to practice rounds when there’s thousands of people out there like it was at Augusta.
“... The warmth and the support of the fans is something that I probably 10 years ago certainly didn’t appreciate as much as I do now.”
