Watson, Jones share first-round lead
AVONDALE, La. – Bubba Watson played his first competitive round since the Masters and after a bogey at the first went on to shoot 6 under 66 to share the first-round lead with Australian Matt Jones at the Zurich Classic New Orleans. Watson’s round included an eagle-3 at the par 5 11th on a card that showed six birdies, two bogeys and nine pars. A chip-in at the last gave Jones a share of the top spot, six players were tied for third at 5 under including Joe Durant, Tommy Gainey, and David Duval while Luke Donald was among players tied for ninth after posting 68s.
In his two weeks away from the game Watson enjoyed fun on the water and spent no time on a golf course until the last few days before heading to Louisiana. It was actually his wife who motivated him to start practicing.
“I started playing golf the last three or four days with some buddies and my wife,” Watson said. “For the first week and a half just goofed around, jet skied, played on the lake. As much goofing around as possible.
“Then my wife is like, ‘you need to start playing golf if you're going to play again,’ and I was like, ‘yeah, you're right.’ So the last four days I just played 18 holes each day and showed up here.
It didn’t seem to take very long to dust off whatever rust had accumulated in his time away.
Jones, who has struggled with his game throughout most of the year, brought his coach in from Australia for some work on his game. The returns seem to have paid instant dividends.
“He flew in Sunday and we've been doing some work,” said Jones. “He flew in from Australia. So we've done a lot of work. My hands are pretty sore, actually, after all the work we've done.
“So it's coming slowly,” he added. “Today we saw some positives out of what we've been doing.”
Durant, coming off a missed cut at Hilton Head last week spoke about coming in and feeling good about his game.
“I hit some good shots last week at Hilton Head,” he said. “I didn't play particularly poorly; I just didn't score very well. Made a couple of equipment changes earlier this week, too, that kind of tidied things up a little bit as well.”
Durant changed shafts after having trouble flighting the ball down this year. He wasn’t happy with the trajectory he was getting and the change has helped him get a lower ball flight he is more accustomed to and able to see under the cap of his hat.
“I've been hitting a lot of up-shooting-type shots, which is not normal for me,” Durant said. “So the shaft change has helped me tremendously. I can see the ball coming out with the proper trajectory now. Made a big difference, especially when it's windy like here.”
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