Neal Lancaster opens with 64 to lead PGA's John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run

From WorldGolf.com News Services

Playing in just his fourth PGA Tour event of the year, Neal Lancaster shot a 7-under-par 64 Thursday to take a one-stroke lead after first-round play of the John Deere Classic.

Bidding for his second PGA Tour victory — his other win was the 1994 GTE Byron Nelson Classic — Lancaster's best finish so far this year was a 24th-place tie at the AT&T Classic. Thursday's performance at TPC Deere Run was one shot off his career-best Tour round, which was a 63 in the second round of the 1998 Greater Hartford Open.

With an old-school approach that includes a "fitness regime" of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day and drinking plenty of Mountain Dew, Lancaster said his focus has been to try and not put any pressure on himself and simply enjoy playing golf.

"I haven't been playing very good for about the last six years, so I just went out and kind of played it as a practice round — just tried to enjoy it (and) didn't know what to expect," Lancaster said in his post-round press conference. "I was hitting it so bad on the range (Wednesday), I just basically quit hitting it.

"(I) didn't even go to the putting green all week because I've been putting so bad for a few years, I just kind of said I'll just go out and what I see, I'll hit it."

Lancaster's round included eight birdies and one bogey, coming on his final hole of the day at the par-4 ninth hole. The 44-year-old from North Carolina made three consecutive birdies on holes 4-6 to get to 8-under before finally giving a shot back on No. 9.

A more laid-back approach has changed the way Lancaster plays and handles himself on the course.

"I think with age, you get more mature," Lancaster said. "I used to be a club-banger, beater, hell-raiser out there. Now, if I hit a bad shot, I think I've seen so many of them, I'm just used to them, and I go, ‘Oh, what the hell, I've seen that before'."

Lancaster owns a one-shot lead over a group of five players who carded 65, including Paul Stankowski, Kenny Perry, Scott Gutschewski, Duffy Waldorf and Jason Dufner. Bob May and Kevin Sutherland both shot 66 and trail by two on the par-71, 7,268-yeard layout in Silvis, Ill.

Masters champ Zach Johnson, the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 15 in the world, returned from a layoff that included a two-week span where he didn't touch a golf club to shoot 70. The Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native, who grew up a little more than an hour from the course, classified his round as "very mediocre."

"The golf course was great and I played pretty average, I thought," Johnson told reporters. "It was just trying to feel it and I'm not quite feeling everything yet."

Leading after 18 holes in a PGA Tour event for the first time since the 1991 Southern Open, Lancaster conceded that he's a long way from where he wants to wind up.

"It's one round," Lancaster said. "It's kind of like the first turn at the Daytona 500 — we haven't even taken off yet."

July 13, 2007