Scheffler finishes with 3 straight birdies, leads Tour Championship after opening round

Masters champion Scottie Scheffler might have had a roller coaster of an opening round Thursday at the Tour Championship if only he had been paying attention to the scoreboards.

Scheffler started with a two-shot lead as the No. 1 seed in the FedEx Cup. He led by as many as six shots on the front nine. Then his lead was down to two. And when he finished with three straight birdies for a five-under 65, he was five strokes ahead of fellow American Xander Schauffele.

"I didn't know any of that," he said. "I was just trying to go out and shoot a good number."

Two-time FedEx Cup champion Rory McIlroy started six shots behind. He teed off in a downpour and hooked his tee shot over the fence and out-of-bounds. He reloaded and found a bunker. He missed a six-foot putt and took triple bogey, and just like that was nine shots behind.

And then he went rough-to-rough to make bogey on the next hole. McIlroy had only one par on the front nine and remarkably salvaged a 67.

"Not the best way to start," McIlroy said. "The golf course is really gettable, so I knew there was a lot of holes out there that you could birdie. I knew my game was good. It was just one of those things. Not the ideal way to start, but proud of how I bounced back from that."

Feeling all the emotions after <a href="https://twitter.com/McIlroyRory?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@McIlroyRory</a>'s first round <a href="https://twitter.com/playofffinale?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PlayoffFinale</a> <a href="https://t.co/QYQWUpDUQs">pic.twitter.com/QYQWUpDUQs</a>

Equally impressive was British Open champion Cameron Smith, playing for the first time since the opening FedEx Cup playoffs event because of a hip injury that gets aggravated in soft conditions. East Lake wasn't quite a real