John Deere Classic round one: Lancaster's plan is to hit or quit

Score another for Butch Harmon. No, not Phil Mickelson’s hot round in the Scottisah Open, although that was a very welcome sight. It’s Neal Lancaster at the John Deere, who says he owes his birdies to the man nominated yet again by his peers as the best coach in America.

I missed Harmon’s little homily on what he says is the increasing tendency for players to be too mechanical with their putting. But Lancaster’s ears pricked up as Harmon urged golfers to return to a more natural putting stroke and he decided Thursday was the perfect day to put it to the test. Result? Fourth for putting and eight birdies to show for it, spoilt only by a bogie on his final hole.

Mind you, our Neal didn’t sound all that fired up about it all. I almost burst into tears as he regaled us with a tale of years of hardship: “19 straight years on the road … it’s kinda tough … golf’s kinda secondary now.” Seems he’s got to the stage where if something doesn’t go right he simply moves on. “I was hitting it so bad on the range yesterday, I just basically quit hitting it. Didn’t even go to the putting green all week because I’ve been putting so bad for a few years.” He sums it all up as his “win or withdraw” strategy.

That doesnt inspire a whole lot of confidence that he’ll still be atop the leaderboard come Sunday. The market puts him way down the pecking order at nearly 40.

Lancaster wasn’t the only one to manage eight birdies Thursday: Kenny Perry and Duffy Waldorf matched him, but couldn’t prevent that extra bogey slipping into their rounds.

The market has the hots for Perry. He’s way out ahead on 5.9 with Carl Pettersson three strokes behind installed as second favourite on 15. As predicted, iron work proved a killer discipline for both Lancaster and Perry. The latter leads the field for greens in regulation. He is though, struggling to find fairways, which could be his eventual undoing. And quite how Paul Stankowski slipped in between them is a something of a statistical mystery. Modest bogey-free golf seems to be the answer.

If Thursday’s pattern is repeated, Lancaster and Perry have little to fear from going out in the afternoon. Average scores between the two shifts were almost identical at just under par. And if anyone agrees with Zach Johnson that his poor opening round was simply down to rust, they might fancy a bit of his 46. Even a touch on Tim Clark at 21 might be rewarding since he seems to have sharpened up his short game considerably. He missed only two greens and fairways.