Patrick Reed leads by two, DeChambeau’s Crushers GC show way in team race at LIV Golf Miami

MIAMI: Despite a double bogey on his closing hole, Patrick Reed shot a 5-under par 67 and grabbed the first-round lead at LIV Golf Miami on Friday at Trump National Doral.

Reed began his round on the 10th hole and put seven birdies on his card, reaching 7 under with a tap-in at the par-5 eighth. But at the par-3 ninth, he missed the green wide left and compounded the mistake by putting his second shot into a bunker.

Reed came back to the pack a bit, but he still held a two-shot lead over Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson (3-under 69).

“I mean, the first 17 were great,” Reed said. “No, as a whole I played solid. I hit the ball pretty well off the tee, hit some quality iron shots and made some putts, and I think that’s what you have to do around this place.

.”.. Yeah, for the back tee with this kind of wind direction here on 9, I don’t know what to do. I don’t have a club for it that I feel like I can hit a straight shot, and it’s hard to start it over the water and get it turning back. It was just an unfortunate finish, but at the end of the day, it’s still a solid round of golf.”

In LIV Golf’s first US event of 2025, it was fitting that the top four players are all past major champions, three of them with at least one green jacket to their name with the Masters a week away.

Reed won the Masters in 2018, Mickelson has captured three green jackets and Dustin Johnson won the 2020 edition that was delayed to November.

“Obviously I was playing really good at the end of 2020,” Johnson said Friday. “But the game I feel like it’s getting pretty close to that. Obviously it’s a really fine line to being that good or just a little bit off, but yeah, I’ve got a lot of confidence in my game right now.”

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