Vegas grabs lead as stars falter at Quail Hollow

You'll be scrolling down for a while if you're searching the PGA Championship leaderboard for the top names in golf after Round 1.

With the likes of Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, and Justin Thomas struggling Thursday, it was veteran Jhonattan Vegas who rose from the field to hold the lead at 7-under with 18 holes complete at Quail Hollow.

That sits two clear of Ryan Gerard and Cam Davis with Luke Donald, Ryan Fox, Alex Smalley, Stephan Jaeger, and Aaron Rai three back. Zero top-15 players in the Official World Golf Rankings are inside the bunched top 20 on the leaderboard.

To say it's a surprise Vegas is leading would be a massive understatement, as the four-time TOUR winner has never finished inside the top 20 at a major championship. The Venezuelan was off in one of the final groups of the day and finished with three consecutive birdies to reach 7-under.

The biggest story of the day was undoubtedly the struggles of the stars at Quail Hollow. Keegan Bradley and Tyrrell Hatton are the only top-20 players in the world inside that number on the leaderboard. Scottie Scheffler lurks just five off the pace, but after that, things thin out even further.

Scheffler and Xander Schauffele played in the super group with McIlroy, and the entire trio carded shocking double-bogeys on the 16th. That led to criticism from Scheffler and Schauffele after the round, calling out the PGA of America for not playing preferred lies and forcing the players to deal with mud balls.

McIlroy entered fresh off his Masters win with four career victories at Quail Hollow, but he battled driver issues and a balky putter in limping around the course. He hit just four fairways on the day and finished 136th in putting. It's his worst opening round at the course since 2011, when he missed the cut. He has plenty of work to do Friday, but if anybody can bounce back, it's the man who holds the course record.

The afternoon wave didn't bring much respite for the top players, with DeChambeau and Thomas among those who couldn't break par.

DeChambeau's brilliance off the tee suggested he was a perfect fit for the lengthy Quail Hollow, and he was exceptional off the tee throughout the day. However, he couldn't crack the top 70 in approach Thursday and failed time and again to get up-and-down when missing greens. Despite those struggles, he refused to pin any blame on the mud balls that Scheffler and Schauffele pointed out earlier in the day.

"You just have to manage your ball a little bit better," DeChambeau told Paolo Uggetti of ESPN. "It's not easy. I hit a couple shots where the ball is over-curving and you just have to go, 'OK, I got to play it out more one way' … everybody has to deal with it.”

That type of mentality was likely key to DeChambeau staying in the fight, and he remains firmly in the mix despite Vegas' late charge.

The same can't be said for Thomas, as the 2017 champion at Quail Hollow got off to a disastrous start with a double-bogey and two bogeys in his first six holes. He recovered with some outrageous short-game skill but sits well back at 2-over.