Akshay Bhatia tops leaderboard after first round at FedEx St. Jude Championship
Renovations at the TPC Southwind course didn’t lead to drastically different scoring results at this year’s FedEx St. Jude championship.
One round is down, and the field is filled with competition. An unlikely leader sits at the top in No. 40 overall ranked player Akshay Bhatia, but he’s got a long list of players on his heels.
Three more days of action remain. If recent years are any indicator, a fun few days are ahead with momentum swirling like a breeze of wind.
Joining Bhatia near the top
Bhatia said after he shot an 8-under 62 on Aug. 7 that he would “relax” and go watch Youtube. He spent most of the day with a two-shot lead, but his bid for a relaxing evening may have changed after Tommy Fleetwood closed his round with four consecutive birdies to finish 7-under, putting him one stroke behind Bhatia.
Three players — Justin Rose, Bud Cauley and Harry Hall — sit at 6-under par.
The dangerous Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1-ranked player on tour, is lurking in the background after shooting 67. He finished with a bogey on No. 18 after finishing his previous 17 holes with at least a par.
Scheffler is still the favorite to win, with the veteran Fleetwood second and the younger Bhatia with the third-best odds, according to FanDuel.
Shot of the day
Mackenzie Hughes averted potential disaster with a monster bogey putt on No. 14 during the first round. The 34-year-old Canadian − who was part of Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway’s group for the tournament pro-am on Aug. 6 − was wild off the tee on the 216-yard par-3. His 192-yard tee shot went well right of the hole and wound up squarely in the water hazard.
But Hughes recovered. After a drop, his approach shot left him 81 feet, 11 inches from the cup.
No worries. Hughes, who entered the FedEx Cup Playoffs 59th in the standings, calmly drilled the lengthy putt, drawing a rousing round of applause from the gallery.
Hughes’ putt is the seventh-longest on the PGA Tour this season, the 10th-longest of the past two seasons and the 13th-longest of the past three seasons.
Oddly enough, the impressive shot is not even Hughes’ longest putt in the past two months. On June 19, he sank an 83-foot, 4-inch putt in the first round of The Travelers Championship.
Room for improvement
Viktor Hovland’s 2025 performance couldn’t be more of a contrast than last year. After finishing tied for second in 2024, Hovland shot 74 in this year’s first round. He’s now among a long group of golfers with the worst odds to win this weekend.
Finishing in the top 50 of the standings and moving on is the goal for many golfers, and a few notable names hurt their chances in the first round. Min Woo Lee finished the first round shooting 76, dropping him from 50th to 56th in the projected standings.
Jordan Speith finished the day shooting 1-under 69, but he dropped from 48th to 50th in the projected standings.
Jason Munz contrubuted to this story.
Damichael Cole is the Memphis Grizzlies beat writer for The Commercial Appeal. Contact Damichael at damichael.cole@commercialappeal.com. Follow Damichael on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DamichaelC.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: FedEx St. Jude leaderboard after round one: Akshay Bhatia leads the way
