Talking the business of sports

The first round of the 2022 Genesis Scottish Open featured everything you could possibly want from the first of eight straight rounds of golf in Scotland. Cameron Tringale holds the lead after shooting a shocking and record-setting 61, and many big time stars were flummoxed all day by the heavy wind and slow greens.

Justin Thomas (again!) caught the wrong end of the draw, which emerged as a prominent storyline in Round 1, Will Zalatoris did something I've never seen happen on a golf course (and I doubt anybody else ever has, either) and somehow -- in one of the strongest fields of the entire year -- there's only one top-10 player in the world inside the top 14 after 18 holes of play.

We'll get to all of that and more in this Round 1 recap.

1. Cameron Tringale (-9): More amazing than Tringale's 61 is the fact that he gained 11 strokes on the field in the process. Eleven! That hasn't happened many times on the PGA Tour in the last several years -- only twice since 2010, in fact -- and part of it certainly was that Tringale caught a heater at the right time in the much easier wave.

Tringale made six straight birdies to start his second nine and only hit one approach on that side outside of 17 feet. He only needed nine putts in his 29 strokes on the back to touch off the 61.

"I believe it's course record over here," said Tringale. "The putter was the story. I got off to a slow, uncommitted start and I decided if you're going to be out here, let's make some positive swings. Started to hole a couple putts. Honestly, that's what happened. My putter was en fuego. Middle of the round, my striking matched my putting. It's the only way it can happen."

Only 2 since 2010. Furyk's BMW 59 and Holmes at Doral in 2015.

T4. Rasmus Hojgaard, Mito Pereira, Kurt Kitayama (-4)

T7. Sam Burns, Alex Smalley, Brandon Wu, Ryan Palmer, Ewen Ferguson, Nicolai Hojgaard, Dylan Frittelli, Doug Ghim (-3)

Burns is the only player in the top 14 who is currently a top-10 player in the world (although a few lurk just beyond this group). He's cooled off slightly since winning the Charles Schwab Challenge and nearly taking the Canadian Open the following week, but he also might be the most underrated player in the world. He finished T18 here last year, and while the start is nice, I'm interested to see if he can maintain it in what should be a windier afternoon tee time on Friday. Burns hits a pretty high ball, and I'm keen to see if he can work it around a little bit in the Scottish weather. If so, he could be a fun Open Championship sleeper pick.

The first thing I saw on Thursday when I turned this event on was Jon Rahm hollering about how he couldn't land a ball on the 139-yard par-3 6th hole. He talked about balls spinning off the planet and nowhere to set it down on that green, which of course is exactly what you want to see when you're watching golf in Scotland. 

Something even weirder happened later in the round when Will Zalatoris chipped a ball that ran past the hole and landed on the very top of Matt Fitzpatrick's ball maker, which looked exactly like a poker chip. This is almost impossible and could not be recreated if you gave every pro at the tournament 1,000 balls. Caddies were taking pictures of the incident and Zalatoris posted one after the round. It was quite a "normal sport" moment.

ICYMI: Quite the balancing act by @WillZalatoris' ball. 😱@ScottishOpen | #GenesisScottishOpen pic.twitter.com/LObZ1Bbdqf

Very normal sport ⁦@KylePorterCBS⁩ pic.twitter.com/wRNHnL5U5u

Willy Z shared the picture his caddie took on Instagram... pic.twitter.com/Ka0JFLPZxI

Thomas again got the bad side of the draw in Round 1. It could shake out differently depending on how the next few days go, but the PGA Championship winner from the wrong side of the draw played a wave on Thursday that was 3.2 strokes harder in the afternoon than what the morning group (including Tringale) saw. Thomas shot 3 over, which was still mediocre even when taking the harsher wind into consideration, but he and others in his wave like Collin Morikawa, Zalatoris and Fitzpatrick will be fighting an uphill battle all weekend unless we see the same dichotomy on Friday.

Here is a look at the updated odds after 18 holes of play, via Caesars Sportsbook.

Spieth intrigues me here. He was 2 under (albeit in the easier wave), but he gained strokes in every category on Thursday and ran it all the way to 5 under at one point early in his round before stalling out coming home. He's always been (and seemingly always will be) a complete menace on links courses, and this week shouldn't be any different as he continues to work toward next week's Open. I love him at 20-1, pending the weather on Friday.

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