South Africa’s Dylan Frittelli quickly joined those in the hunt to win the RBC Heritage with a fine bogey-free start on Thursday, writes WADE PRETORIUS.
Frittelli missed five fairways off the tee and the same number of greens but was mistake free en route to his 65 that put him in the chasing group of six behind Ian Poulter and American Mark Hubbard.
‘Just consistent. Really nice and consistent,’ he said on Thursday.
‘I thought on 18, did I hit every green today? No, a few of them rolled just off the green. But pretty much everything in my game was solid today and really look forward to maintaining that throughout the week.’
One of the benefits of being educated in the US is course knowledge, something that comes at a premium with the changes to the schedule following a disrupted 2020 season.
‘Yeah, it was a lot softer, I guess, the first two practice rounds I had here, so balls were stopping with 6, 7 irons,’ said Frittelli.
‘But I think it’s going to firm up a lot when the wind sort of hits the course and a little more mowing on the green should make it a bit firmer and quicker come the weekend. So it should play a lot more similar to April the last two rounds.’
Frittelli’s World Cup of Golf teammate Erik van Rooyen was next best at -5 with Ernie Els, in his 20th start at the event, a further stroke back where he was joined by Christiaan Bezuidenhout, who relied on a warm putter as he gained a full stroke on the stacked field in round one.
Branden Grace, a previous winner of this event, was at -2 with Charl Schwartzel level par.
SA’s No 1 Louis Oosthuizen has a big task ahead of him if he is to stick around for the weekend. He is +2 after struggling with his approach to the greens; despite hitting 10 fairways, he found just 50% of greens in regulation in the opening round.
