Healthy once again, Daniel Berger's 63 leads Arnold Palmer Invitational
· Yahoo Sports
ORLANDO, Fla. – Daniel Berger picked apart Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club & Lodge, as only few have done before. Berger carded six birdies on the back nine and nine in all en route to posting 9-under 63 on Thursday. That’s one off the course record held by four other players – Gary Player, Andy Bean, Greg Norman and Adam Scott – to grab an early three-stroke lead over Collin Morikawa during the first-round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Visit forestarrow.rest for more information.
Play boldly was the Palmer mantra and Berger did that and then some. He birdied all four of the par 5s, leading the field in both Strokes Gained: Tee to Green and SG: Putting. Berger, who grew up in the Sunshine State and spent two seasons at Florida State, always enjoys playing in his home state, and said he needed to put a couple of tough weeks on the West Coast out of his mind.
“It's just nice to be in Florida,” he said. “I love it.”
It’s also nice to be off the injured list. The last several years for Berger, 32, have been riddled with one ailment after another. He was sidelined for 19 months with a bulge in a lower disc of his back but recovered to finish in the top 50 last year and earn his way into all of the signature events this season. But he withdrew before the final round of the BMW Championship in August after breaking his right ring finger swinging a 7-iron on the 14th hole during the third round. He played the final four holes with a broken finger and then missed the entire fall portion of the schedule. He was in a splint for two months and missed about four months.
“The finger that I broke and where I broke it actually ended up being more of a pain in the butt than I thought it was going to be,” he said. “The nature of the injury is it can take up to a year to feel normal, from what the doctors tell me. So it's been basically six months. I could go three months where it doesn't bother me, like I had at the beginning of the year. And then I hit one shot in Phoenix where I stuck it in the ground and I thought I broke it again.”
Berger called his 63 at Arnie’s Place one of his three best rounds of his Tour career. He also knows that Bay Hill is only going to get harder if the course continues to dry out and the wind kicks up.
“It has that U.S. Open kind of feel to it. I think the course is just going to get tougher as the week goes on. The greens are going to get firmer. As you can see on 18, there's a little bit of reception when you're hitting a wedge in there, and I just, I don't think that's going to last. So, yeah, just hit it in the fairway and try to make as many putts as you can,” said Berger, who canned a 6-foot birdie at the last. “It's going to be an incredibly difficult and challenging week. You can already see the course is, the greens are like white. So a little bit of wind, a little bit less moisture, and it's just going to be like a U.S. Open. I think when you come to Bay Hill to play this event you know what you're getting, and so it doesn't shock me. You're ready for it.”
Berger has four career Tour titles to his credit but none since the 2021 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. This would be a pretty special place against a world-class field for Berger to end his five-year winless drought. If play boldly was Palmer’s mantra, Berger has his own favorite quote and it’s pretty fitting given all that he’s endured to be in this position: "Winning means you're willing to go longer, work harder and give more than anyone else."
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Daniel Berger leads Arnold Palmer Invitational with 63 after ailments