Photo credit: @golfweek

By Jeremy Harness

NAPA–Exactly a year after a terrible firestorm ripped through this area and damaged a part of Silverado Golf Resort, the PGA Tour has returned to Northern California and is in very good shape.

The players have responded in kind, and it shows in the low scores that were carded on Thursday.

Sepp Straka took the first-round lead by shooting a nine-under 63, carrying a one-shot advantage into Friday’s action. He birdied four holes on the front nine, and then he added five more on the back side, including birdieing the last three holes in a row en route to a bogey-free round.

“I really wasn’t expecting that right out of the gates,” said Straka, who is playing in his first PGA Tour event after graduating from the Web.com Tour after last season. “But I had a good game plan, and I just tried to do it shot by shot.

“My putter was really hot, putted the ball very well. Other than that, I just took advantage of my chances.”

Chase Wright, another Web.Com Tour graduate, is one stroke behind Straka after firing a bogey-free round of 64. He didn’t get off to as good a start as Straka, recording a pair of birdies on the front side. However, he absolutely caught fire on the back nine, as he put four birdies on the board to go along with an eagle at the par-5 16^th hole.

“(It was) patience at its finest,” Wright said. “Just tried to stay positive, committed to what I was doing and didn’t really put myself in any crazy spots.”

Less than a week after capping off a disappointing showing by himself as well as the United States team in this year’s Ryder Cup, Phil Mickelson had a nice bounce-back performance at Silverado, and he finds himself only two shots back after the first round.

He fired a seven-under round of 65 on Thursday, which included an eye-popping six birdies in a row on holes nine through 14. Although he hit only half of his fairways (seven of 14), he hit 14 of the 18 greens and was able to get up and down when he missed the other four greens.

However, he certainly didn’t feel like he was going to have a round like he did before he teed off.

“I hit it terrible (on the range),” Mickelson said. “I had one of the worst warmups of the year. I was hitting the fence on the range right, I was hitting the fence left.

“But you throw on one of these shirts and you can dance and you can hit fairways, it’s awesome. So this week, I’m not hitting any balls, I’m not practicing, I’m not hitting chips, I’m not hitting putts. I’ll have a nice 45-minute warmup, and that’s it. I’m trying to just save every ounce of energy and shotmaking and visualization for the course.”