COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Padraig Harrington said he thought it was one part nice, another part disappointing, to scrounge out a bogey after snapping a tee shot deep into the woods on the 15th hole of his opening round at the U.S. Senior Open.
Either way, that scramble Thursday kept Harrington atop the leaderboard, tied with Mark Hensby at 3-under 67 at the Broadmoor, where every shot is an adventure.
“You never feel good after you’ve lost a ball, so your head is a little scrambled,” said Harrington, the 2022 champion. “You’re just trying to get your head around what you’re doing.”
It’s a common feeling on this course at an altitude of 6,000 feet nestled at the base of Cheyenne Mountain — a tilting landscape that impacts every putt in ways not every player can see.
Stewart Cink hit his first 17 greens on a calm opening day but finished with a bogey on No. 18 after his first miss. He was part of a group of seven, including Thomas Bjorn, at 68.
“It’s not the kind of course where you string together four birdie putts in a row, where you’re just like ‘hoop, hoop, hoop, hoop,'” Cink said. “I had some putts out there that were 20-footers that had 8, 9 feet of break, and you’re just not going to make that many of those.”
Harrington made all four of his birdies on the (easier) front nine and was leading by one when he snapped his tee shot on the par-4 15th. The Irishman said his disappointment came from the fact that he thought his group conducted its 3-minute search in a thicket of trees that was well short of where the ball landed.
His relief came from scraping out a bogey after heading back to the tee box and hitting that shot in deep rough on the right, then the approach from there to 20 feet.
“In general, you’re just keeping yourself in position, which I did nicely today,” Harrington said.
Also in good position was Hensby, though it was hard to tell in the aftermath of his bogey-bogey finish during the morning wave, both coming after errant drives into the rough.
“Obviously, I felt like I lost some out there,” Hensby said. “It’s just frustrating. I played like s— [on] the back nine. What else can you say?”
He made seven birdies on the front nine to get to 6 under — a number that might not be approached again at a course that yielded only 17 rounds under par with 156 players in the field.
When the tournament was last played here in 2018, David Toms won with a score of 3-under par — a number that made Hensby’s score after nine that much more remarkable, whether he was happy with it or not.
“I’ve never been a very consistent player,” he said. “I’m hot or cold, and that kind of sucks.”
Harrington was one of many players whose practice was shortened Tuesday by a massive thunderstorm that soaked and softened the course.
“We got a break today, to be fair,” said Notah Begay, who made the field as an alternate and shot even par.
Even with that break, the Day 1 scoring average was 73.94, only about .7 shots under the four-day total from 2018, when only seven players finished under par.
Among those struggling was Ángel Cabrera, a two-time senior major winner this year, who shot 73.
Cabrera’s 10-foot birdie try on No. 6 skirted the cup, and he dropped his putter and bent down an placed his hands on his knees, trying to figure out how he missed. A hole later, more pain when a 3-footer barely caught the left edge and rimmed out.
The forecast for the next three days calls for highs near 90 and a chance of rain. The altitude and that mountain to the west of the course — that never changes.
“Not only is it hard to hit the ball at the right distance with the altitude and the ups and downs and the spins and all that,” Cink said. “But you leave yourself a lot of 20-, 25-foot putts that have a lot of break and don’t always do what they look like they’re going to do.”
