Deutsche Bank Championship round one: Ignorance seems to be bliss

Have the changes to TPC Boston caught out the old hands? While the “big three", with a total seven from 12 possible previous visits here, stumbled their way around the course Friday, the three leaders only boast three previous visits between them. Reinforcing the notion is the fact that the best player of the struggling threesome was Phil Mickelson, who like Mike Weir among the top trio has no course form at all.

But for one horror hole that he triple-bogeyed, Lefty would be a much more serious threat. As it is I would be surprised not to see him make up ground on the leaders Saturday. If you ignore the putting, which was again wayward, Lefty’s figures were not half bad, and he and his chums are out early in the morning, which should help them.

Tiger Woods was clearly disappointed not to have recovered from his loose start to at least a par round. He now needs “at least one great round” as he put it. His putting was no great shakes, and his iron work was all over the place too. But the only one of the threesome that already looks doomed is Vijay Singh. Can he really be heading for a third missed cut in a row? Unbelievable.

Call me a misery guts, but I’m not overly happy to see Camilo Villegas in the lead. We all know what usually happens to first round leaders and people who go really low. A bit of profit-taking might be in order. Still, he too should take some benefit from going out early in round two. His stats are classy: third for accuracy of the tee, 19th for putting and third for greens in regulation. Only distance uncharacteristically lets him down - he’s 24th!

The early returns suggest the course changes have helped those who can find the fairways. Accuracy off the tee seems to have helped more players gain an advantage than distance. Maybe the bombers just need to rewire their memory banks a little, although that’s not going to be possible for Bubba Watson. That was an all-round awful seven over.