When you get it rolling and you’re playing that well, it definitely frees things up. – Zac Blair
Utah’s Zac Blair tied the course record with a bogey-free 7-under 63 Thursday to grab the first-round lead at the Web.com Tour Championship at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
The former BYU golfer only needed 23 putts on the newly renovated Dye Valley course at TPC Sawgrass to take a two-stroke advantage into Friday’s second round of the final event of the Web.com Tour Finals.
“When you get it rolling and you’re playing that well, it definitely frees things up,” said Blair, who grew up in Ogden and attended Fremont High before playing for four years at BYU.
Among the five players at 65 is Scott Pinckney, who grew up in Orem before moving to Arizona and playing for Arizona State. Others at 65 include Derek Fathauer, Sung Joon Park, Chad Collins and Bron La’Cassie.
After making just under $100,000 in eight starts on the Web.com Tour, Blair qualified for the Finals, which matches the top 75 players from the Web.com Tour with the players who finished 126 through 200 on the PGA tour this year in four tournaments.
Twenty-five golfers, including Utah’s Tony Finau, have already clinched their cards for next year’s PGA Tour and 25 more players will earn their cards at the conclusion of this week’s tournament, which is the fourth event of the Finals.
Blair has failed to make a cut in the three previous Finals events, but he could still make the PGA Tour with a top-five finish this week. The guess is that it will take $40,000 to finish in the top 25, and the fifth-place finisher will earn $40,000.
Blair began the year with conditional status on the Web.com Tour, and after playing some events on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica, he teed up on the Web.com Tour for the first time in early July in Nova Scotia, where he tied for seventh. The following week, he played in the Utah Championship and finished in a tie for 11th. He had three more top-25 finishes the rest of the summer.