The slightly-built American finished on a high with a magnificent birdie after driving into the rough at the 18th to end up with a four-under 67, joining Dane Thorbjorn Olesen at the top of the leaderboard.<\/p>\n
Kevin Kisner is not known for the length of his drive but he executed his game plan to perfection at the long, rain-softened Quail Hollow layout on Thursday to emerge with a share of the first-round lead at the PGA Championship.<\/p>\n
The slightly-built American finished on a high with a magnificent birdie after driving into the rough at the 18th to end up with a four-under 67, joining Dane Thorbjorn Olesen at the top of the leaderboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s about four or five holes that I have to birdie to compete and I birdied them all today,\u201d the 33-year-old told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that\u2019s kind of been my game plan. Make a lot of pars and get to a par-five or one of those short par-fours (where) I can do my wedge game and get it to 10 or 12 feet. That\u2019s my plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kisner said seven, eight, 14 and 15 were his must-have holes and sure enough he birdied them. The Southern Carolinian added another birdie at the par-three sixth for a three-in-a-row streak and the birdie at the tricky 18th put a cherry on top of his day.<\/p>\n
Winner in Fort Worth this year for his second PGA Tour title, Kisner said he was accustomed to having to plot his strategy to keep up with the long hitters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to say every course we play is a bomber\u2019s course,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if they are not playing from the fairway, I wouldn\u2019t want to be doing it. The rough\u2019s brutal. I don\u2019t care how far they hit it.
\n\u201cIf I can keep hitting fairways, I\u2019m going to like my chances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kisner grabbed his share of the lead despite failing to stay on the fairway at the 18th. \u201cI had 200 (yards) to the front and I was in between a five and a six-iron,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just all dependent on your lie. That one was just thinned behind it so I knew I could get a club on it \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it would come out knuckling, and was just trying to judge how far it\u2019s going to run.\u201d Kisner\u2019s judgment was impeccable as his challenging approach shot ran up to the green 20 feet left of the hole \u2013 close enough for a birdie-three to send him into the second round as co-leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The slightly-built American finished on a high with a magnificent birdie after driving into the rough at the 18th to end up with a four-under 67, joining Dane Thorbjorn Olesen at the top of the leaderboard. Kevin Kisner is not known for the length of his drive but he executed his game plan to perfection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1869,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions\/1869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}