After losing his edge, Jason Day has found it again

JACKSON, Miss. - The most indelible image of Sergio Garcia playing with his eyes closed was when he hit his famous shot off a tree root at the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah. Until Friday, that is. That's when the TV cameras caught Garcia putting with his eyes closed as he shot his second straight 68 to work his way into contention at 8 under par at the Sanderson Farms Championship. He took 30 putts and is in the middle of the pack in Strokes Gained: Putting, and insisted afterward that the unusual looking technique is in fact old hat. RELATED: Full leaderboard | Daffue keeps dream in sight "Would you believe me if I told you I’ve been doing it for about three years?" Garcia said. Well, no. But, he added, he hasn't done it consistently. Garcia, 40, said he even putted with his eyes closed in winning the 2017 Masters Tournament, the last of his 10 PGA TOUR titles. "I’ve gone on and off," he said, "but like Augusta, I won it playing with my eyes closed every single putt and some of the other wins, too. I feel like it gives me a little more freedom to feel the stroke instead of kind of - sometimes we get too focused on trying to make it perfect and kind of following with the eyes and everything. This way I feel like I just feel it and I just let my natural ability kind of take over instead of telling myself what to do." Garcia's natural ability has been mostly missing in action. He is coming off a season in which he recorded just one top-25 finish, a T5 at the RBC Heritage, in 12 mostly forgettable starts. It was a jarring line for a player who had never recorded fewer than four top-25s in 21 previous TOUR seasons. When he missed the Playoffs, it was for just the second time in the FedExCup era. He's found something, though, on the speedy greens at the Country Club of Jackson. Garcia made five birdies against just one bogey on Friday and was two back after the morning wave. "You’ve got to go with it and trust it, believe it," he said, "and you might have a week here and there where you don’t putt as well, but I think that I’m at the point where I need to. "I talked to my wife, to Angela, and we talked about it," Garcia continued, "and I have to stick to something and go with it no matter what. I’m in a stage of my career where I can’t be jumping back and forth too much because then I get no rhythm whatsoever."

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SANDWICH, England – While red numbers weren’t rare during the opening round at The 149th Open, Royal St. George’s still claimed some big names with U.S. Open champion Jon Rahm and PGA Champion Phil Mickelson among those to struggle. RELATED: Leaderboard | Jon Rahm leads the list of links specialists | Club foot reason for Jon Rahm’s TOUR-winning short swing The season’s previous two major winners will need a form turnaround if they are to make it a double in 2021, with Mickelson shooting a 10-over 80 – his worst ever start to a major – and Rahm battling to a 1-over 71. The man the duo both conquered – South African Louis Oosthuizen – has started his quest to better his back-to-back major runner-ups with a 6-under 64. It left those players on the wrong side of par with an uphill battle as 73 of the 154 players opened the championship at par or better. Bryson DeChambeau, Matt Fitzpatrick and defending champion Shane Lowry were among those joining Rahm at 1 over while Justin Thomas and Patrick Reed are 2 over. Recent PGA TOUR winners Garrick Higgo (73), Patrick Cantlay (74), Marc Leishman (75), Harris English (75), and Lucas Glover (75) also struggled. Rory McIlroy needed a final-hole birdie to shoot even-par 70. Mickelson’s 80 was his worst round in The Open – which he won in 2013 – since an 85 in the third round of the 1998 tournament. Those represent just two of now 93 rounds in The Open where the veteran has failed to break 80. Five bogeys on the front nine started the pain as the six-time major winner turned in 40 and another five dropped shots in his last six holes, including a closing double bogey, left him tied for last in the 154-man field. Spaniard Rahm was the pre-tournament favorite after his impressive U.S. Open victory at Torrey Pines last month, but he lost his way on the ninth hole when he failed to escape from a fairway bunker on the first attempt and made a double bogey. Playing with Oosthuizen, Rahm felt like his wheels were spinning despite making plenty of grinding pars, until a final-hole birdie gave him something to smile about. DeChambeau couldn’t get his radar adjusted off the tee. He managed four birdies on the round but hit the same number of fairways in regulation meaning he was hamstrung by five bogeys. “The driver sucks. It’s not a good face for me and we’re still trying to figure out how to make it good on the miss-hits. I’m living on the razor’s edge,” DeChambeau bemoaned post round. “It’s quite finicky for me because it’s a golf course that’s pretty short, and so when I hit driver and it doesn’t go in the fairway, it’s first cut or it’s in the hay, it’s tough for me to get it out on to the green and control that… I couldn’t control my wedges.”

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