Floridan Billy Horschel and fellow American Joseph Bramlett shared the first-round lead at the PGA Tour\u2019s Honda Classic at Palm Beach Gardens on Thursday after shooting five-under rounds of 65.<\/p>\n
The event, which traditionally marks the start of the Florida Swing, has lost some appeal to many of the top players on the tour due to the changes in the schedule.<\/p>\n
None of the world\u2019s top 10 golfers are playing this week and sponsors Honda are ending their 42-year backing for the event after this year.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old Horschel, who has seven career PGA Tour wins, has lamented the decline of the tournament.<\/p>\n
He is hoping to take advantage of the absence of the top stars to finally clinch a win in his home state.<\/p>\n
Horschel has been struggling with a sinus infection and said that ailment had counter-intuitively helped him relax for the round, which featured six birdies and a bogey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a saying \u2013 beware of the injured or sick golfer. I\u2019m not like super, super sick, but I\u2019m just not like a hundred percent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you are just sort of, a little bit easier on yourself. You\u2019re sort of not worrying about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bramlett, searching for a first win on the PGA Tour, was bogey free, starting his round with a 28-foot birdie putt on the par-four 10th before a brilliant 42-footer for birdie on the par-three 5th hole.<\/p>\n
Photo: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Floridan Billy Horschel and fellow American Joseph Bramlett shared the first-round lead at the PGA Tour\u2019s Honda Classic at Palm Beach Gardens on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4224,"featured_media":427414,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17735],"news_category":[16713],"gn_keywords":[],"acf":{"announce":"None of the world\u2019s top 10 golfers are playing at Palm Beach Gardens this week","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/427413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/427413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427413"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=427413"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=427413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}