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PALM COAST — Much of the pre-tournament talk focused on Ryan Palmer, who’s making his PGA Tour Champions debut at the Furyk & Friends on the Ocean Course.
However, a shockingly rude welcome awaited Palmer, who struggled mightily and posted the day’s high round — an 81.
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It was another Ryan — Ryan Armour, nearing the end of his rookie year on the over-50 tour — who bookended Palmer on the leaderboard. Armour’s 9-under 63 was good for a one-shot lead on a day when the course played soft due to this week’s rain, but also a day when a sketchy forecast relented and allowed the umbrellas to remain holstered.
Ryan Armour’s results have been greatly improved in recent weeks and now he’s opened the Furyk & Friends with a 63.
It helped that the tee times were moved up 3½ hours, as they will be Saturday for a second round now scheduled to tee off at 8 a.m.
Who’s just behind Ryan Armour at the Furyk & Friends?
Paul Goydos and Rod Pampling were one off the lead with 64s. Vaughn Taylor, Billy Mayfair and Michael Wright each shot 67.
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Armour, playing in the second group off No. 1, birdied five holes on each nine, with a lone bogey on the par-4 13th. That early start was an advantage.
“It was really nice to have fresh greens, being second off,” he said. “The greens rolled way better than I expected after all the rain we had.”
The occasional mud-ball on the Ocean Course fairways was remedied by tour officials allowing for “lift, clean and place,” which will likely remain in place through the weekend.
PGA Tour Champions leader was a late-blooming rookie
With the rain-weary fairways and greens on the slow side, tee markers were moved up and the course played shorter than its listed yardage of 7,149.
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“I’ve never been a long player, so that helped,” said Armour, who admits to entering this rookie senior campaign less than prepared — he didn’t have a top-10 until late August, but has three top-fives in his last five starts.
“I just didn’t play enough in my 49th year,” he said Friday. “And then when I turned 50, I was still kind of in ‘dad mode.’ It took a while for me to get used to it again.
“I was always a good driver of the golf ball, and I would hit a couple each day where I was like, ‘Where did that come from?’ As soon as I had more reps under me, you know, it felt normal.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Ryan Armour rides better play to Furyk & Friends lead on PGA Tour Champions
