London, ON (SportsNetwork.com) – Matt Marshall and Erik Barnes opened up with matching 4-under 68s in Thursday’s first round and they share the lead at the Tour Championship of Canada.<\/p>\n
While both Marshall and Barnes each have a top-10 finish on tour this season, neither of them have won on the PGA Tour Canada.<\/p>\n
Jay Myers, Sean Shahi, Adam Cornelson, Ryan Williams, Eugene Wong and Michael Gligic are all within one shot of the leaders at 3-under 69 after the first round on the Championship Course at Sunningdale Golf & Country Club.<\/p>\n
Matt Harmon and Greg Eason, who are Nos. 3 and 5 respectively on the Order of Merit, are tied for ninth and are two shots back at 2-under 70. They are joined there by John Ellis, Ryan Brehm and Ted Brown.<\/p>\n
Joel Dahmen, who holds the No. 1 spot on the Order of Merit by over $20,000, is tied for 14th with nine others at 1-under 71. The top-5 players on the Order of Merit following the Tour Championship will earn status on the Web.com Tour next season.<\/p>\n
Marshall had a rather quiet front nine after getting off to a fast start. After making birdie on the first, Marshall rattled off eight straight pars to make the turn at minus-1.<\/p>\n
The back nine is where Marshall made his move, starting with two gains on his first three holes at 10 and 12. Marshall gave one of those shots back with a bogey on 14, but a birdie on the par-5 15th had him right back to 3-under.<\/p>\n
A pair of pars on 16 and 17 preceded Marshall’s fifth and final gain of the day at the last to grab a share of the lead at minus-4.<\/p>\n
Barnes had a strong opening nine, starting with birdies on one and three to quickly get him into red numbers at minus-2. Following five straight pars, Barnes gained some momentum as he made the turn with his third birdie on No. 9.<\/p>\n
After three pars from 10, Barnes wrapped two birdies on 13 and 15 around a bogey on the 14th, getting him to 4-under. He finished with three straight pars to end there.<\/p>\n
NOTES: Timothy Madigan, No. 2 on the Order of Merit, is near the bottom of the leaderboard. He is in 56th at 7-over 79 … Marshall’s best finish of the season came at the SIGA Dakota Dunes Open, where he ended fifth … Barnes has missed three cuts this year, but he also finished just ahead of Marshall in fourth at the SIGA Dakota Dunes Open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
London, ON (SportsNetwork.com) – Matt Marshall and Erik Barnes opened up with matching 4-under 68s in Thursday’s first round and they share the lead at the Tour Championship of Canada. While both Marshall and Barnes each have a top-10 finish on tour this season, neither of them have won on the PGA Tour Canada. Jay […]<\/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-23385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23385","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=23385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}