GREENSBORO, N.C. - Brandt Snedeker predicted low scores at the Wyndham Championship - but not this low.
Snedeker shot an 11-under-par 59 Thursday at Sedgefield Country Club, just missing matching the PGA Tour record.
The 37-year-old Nashville native, who played at Vanderbilt, made a 20-foot putt on his final hole to become the 10th player in tour history to break 60. Jim Furyk set the record with a 58 in the final round of the Travelers Championship in 2016.
"I better be smiling," Snedeker said. "I don't do this every day."
This is the third consecutive year the PGA Tour has had a sub-60 round. Snedeker is the first to shoot a 59 on tour since Adam Hadwin in the third round of the 2017 Careerbuilder Challenge.
It gave him a four-stroke lead after one round. Ryan Moore and John Oda were tied for second, and Abraham Ancer, Jonathan Byrd, Martin Flores, David Hearn, D.A. Points, Ollie Schniederjans and Brett Stegmaier were another shot back at 64.
Three of the four former Baylor School golfers on the PGA Tour are in the field this week in the final event before the playoffs begin with the top 125 golfers in the FedEx Cup standings after the Wyndham Championship. Keith Mitchell, a tour rookie who is 66th in the FedEx standings, was part of a nine-way tie for 11th after a 65 that included six birdies and one bogey. Harris English was another stroke back and tied for 20th as he tries to climb up from his 132nd spot in the standings. Stephan Jaeger, a rookie who is 163rd in the standings, was tied for 32nd at 67.
The lone former Red Raiders standout on tour not in Greensboro is Luke List, who played the PGA Championship last week and is a safe 29th in the FedEx standings.
Snedeker - who said a day earlier that the tournament would turn into a "birdie-fest" - began the round with a bogey at No. 10.
It got much better from there. He played the front nine in 27, including an eagle on the par-4 No. 6 when he holed out from 176 yards.
After that shot, Snedeker said a 59 felt like a real possibility. He remembered a nontour event he played in China in which he was one putt from that score, but that day, thoughts of such a low score "got in the way" of actually making it happen.
"To know what you're trying to do, and step up and have a 20-footer (on the final hole) and know what it means, I was very aware of what was going on," Snedeker said, "and to knock that putt in was really special. To know I'm a part of a small club on tour and not very many people have done this - really cool feeling right now."
Snedeker, the 2012 FedEx Cup champion, won the Wyndham Championship in 2007. He broke Si Woo Kim's 2-year-old Wyndham single-round record of 60 and had the best opening round in this event's history (Arjun Atwal shot a 61 in 2010).
"The trick for him is, he's playing great. Now he's just got to rest, relax and start over tomorrow from scratch and go play three more good rounds," said Furyk, who also shot a 59 at the BMW Championship in 2013. "It's awesome to see."
Furyk was tied for 11th.
It's been a somewhat frustrating, turbulent year for Snedeker. He has three top-10 finishes and two missed cuts in his past seven events and has not won on tour since 2016. During his first 16 tournaments of the season, he finished in the top 10 just once.
"Nobody could see this coming - trust me," Snedeker said. "As much as I tried to positive self-talk myself into playing good, I didn't see 59 coming today, to be honest with you. Luckily, it kind of clicked all day today, and hopefully it will keep clicking for the next three days."
At No. 80 on the points list entering the final event of the tour's regular season, he's nowhere near the playoff bubble, and his spot at The Northern Trust next week in New Jersey seems safe. That ranking is his lowest since the tour's postseason format debuted in 2007, though.
During his tie for 42nd at the PGA Championship last week in St. Louis, Snedeker said he "kind of found something" when he simplified some swing fundamentals and began to feel better about that part of his game. He spent Thursday showing it off.
Snedeker, who began his round on the back nine, reeled off four consecutive birdies on Nos. 13-16. He then got even hotter on his final nine holes, with six birdies in addition to the shot of the day on No. 6. He missed a three-foot birdie putt on No. 8 that would have made a 58 possible.
"Could have been even more special," he said, "but happy with the way everything turned out."
Salas ties record
INDIANAPOLIS - Lizette Salas matched the course record with a 10-under 62 at Brickyard Crossing Golf Club, making birdies on the final three holes for a two-stroke lead over Nasa Hataoka and Angel Yin after the first round of the Indy Women in Tech Championship.
Yin birdied eight of the first nine holes in her morning round for a front-nine 8-under 28 - one short of the LPGA Tour's nine-hole record. It matched the third-lowest nine-hole score in relation to par in tour history.
Salas eagled the par-5 second hole in the afternoon and added three straight birdies on Nos. 4-6. She birdied Nos. 12 and 14 before reeling off three more in a row to close, waiting out a late 77-minute suspension of play because of an approaching storm.
Salas tied the mark set by Mike McCullough in the PGA Tour Champions' 1999 Comfort Classic.
Sordet's 62 leads
GOTHENBURG, Sweden - France's Clement Sordet opened with four straight birdies to shoot an 8-under 62 and take the first-round lead at the Nordea Masters.
"I wasn't really focusing on the score, I was just enjoying it," said Sordet, who shot his lowest round on the European Tour and has a two-stroke lead over Scotland's Scott Jamieson and England's Lee Slattery.
Hunter Stewart was the top American on the leaderboard at Hills Golf Club after a 5-under 65 left him in a four-way tie for fourth with Christofer Blomstrand, Richard Green and Tapio Pulkkanen.
Renato Paratore's hopes of becoming the first player to successfully repeat as the tournament's winner seem doubtful after he opened with a 79.