Winnipeg, MB (SportsNetwork.com) – Erik Barnes fired an 8-under 63 in the opening round Thursday and grabbed a 1-shot lead at The Players Cup.<\/p>\n
Barnes, who is in his second season on the PGA Tour Canada, is coming off a fourth-place finish at the Dakota Dunes Open.<\/p>\n
Joshua Creel is one stroke off the lead as he opened with a 64 at Pine Ridge Golf Club. Brock Mackenzie, the 2010 Times Colonist Open winner, is alone in third place after a first-round 65.<\/p>\n
Drew Stoltz and Matthew Smith share fourth place at minus-5, while Matt Hill, Doug McGuigan and Tyler Aldridge are tied for sixth at 4-under 67.<\/p>\n
Barnes started his bogey-free round with birdies on the second and fourth. He also birdied the sixth and eighth as he headed to the back nine at minus-4.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old birdied the par-5 12th and followed with an eagle on the short par-4 13th. After four pars in a row, Barnes birdied the last two grab the lead.<\/p>\n
Creel parred his first three holes, then made eagle on the par-5 fourth. After three more pars, he birdied the par-5 eighth before making a pair of pars.<\/p>\n
He moved to 4-under with a birdie on the par-4 11th and that kicked off a run of four straight birdies. The burst moved Creel within one of the lead. He birdied the 17th, but stumbled to a bogey at the last to end one back.<\/p>\n
NOTES: Barnes has carded three 63s in his last four rounds as he also shot 63 in the second and final rounds last week in Saskatchewan … Brady Schnell, who tied for fifth last year, struggled to a 2-over 73, which left him tied for 71st.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winnipeg, MB (SportsNetwork.com) – Erik Barnes fired an 8-under 63 in the opening round Thursday and grabbed a 1-shot lead at The Players Cup. Barnes, who is in his second season on the PGA Tour Canada, is coming off a fourth-place finish at the Dakota Dunes Open. Joshua Creel is one stroke off the lead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}