Ohio Open Leaderboard is Crowded After Day 1; 26 Within 4 Shots of the Lead Held by Three

Westfield: Of the six players at or near the top of the 103rd Ohio Open leaderboard after the first round at Westfield Country Club we have one player from Uniontown, one from Toledo, one from Westerville, one from Strongsville, one from Cincinnati and one from . . . England?

Okay, so amateur Thomas Bell, who is one of three players tied for second place at 4-under 66, is from Bowling Green by way of Waterloo, Iowa by way of High Wycombe, England.

Bell lists Bowling Green as his residence after moving there from Iowa when he transferred to Bowling Green State University after spending two years at Hawkeye Community College and we all know where Hawkeyes come from.

Bell was the only player in the field of 288 to make it through the first 18 holes – of a scheduled 54 — without suffering a bogey.

Even tri-leaders Michael Balcar, Maxwell Moldovan and Ali Khan suffered a misstep or two on their respective ways to the top of the leaderboard after all three shot 5-under 65 on a bright and sometimes windy day.

Strongsville’s Jake Scott, who has spent time as an assistant at Elyria Country Club but has status on the PGA Americas Tour, joined Bell and former Big Ten champion out of Ohio State Kevin Hall, at 66.

Each of the leading scores — and five of the top six — were posted on the South Course, where the average score was 74.38. Only Bell, who graduated from BGSU this spring, shot his 66 on the North Course, which played to an average of 74.92.

Balcar, the defending champion after a record-setting 14-under 196 last year, was the first in with his nines of 33-32. Four of his six birdies came on the front nine, where he made one birdie putt from 39 feet and two-putted from the fairway on the 573-yard eighth.
His putter stayed hot upon making the turn as he drove the 361-yard 10th green and 2-putted from 54 feet and made a 2-footer on the 363-yard 11th.

“You know what they say,” said Balcar, an assistant professional at Brandywine Country Club in Maumee. “You can’t win a tournament on the first day, but you can lose it. So, I’m very happy to get off to a good start. I’m assuming 5-under will keep me in the mix. I just want to stick to the process and improve every day if I can.”

Uniontown’s Moldovan, who graduated from Ohio State in May after becoming the most highly decorated player in program history – yes, more so than Jack Nicklaus, John Cook, et al – arrived in Northeast Ohio from a PGA Americas Tour stop in Edmonton on Saturday. He flew from Edmonton to Calgary to Washington, D.C. and eventually landing in Cleveland late that day.

Unfortunately, his clubs missed a connecting flight in Washington, D.C. and did not arrive in Stark County until 8 p.m. Sunday. He used an old set for a practice round at Prestwick Country Club earlier that day before his mother-in-law, Tracy Andrego, was able to retrieve the regulars at Hopkins.

Still, he emerged with a 65 that consisted of seven birdies and two bogeys.

“I’ll take it,” he said. “It’s been a pretty hectic 48 hours.”

Moldovan, a former Ohio Amateur champ and four-time winner while at OSU, got off to a torrid start with birdies on four of his first six holes and five on his first eight with a bogey sandwiched in between.

He made putts of eight, six and five feet and two-putted from about 35 feet from above the hole on the 526-yard sixth. His only bogey on the front came on the par-3 seventh but he got it right back with a birdie on the 573-yard eighth.

“That was big,” he said. “I had kind of an intimidating 150-yard shot (after getting caught up in the rough) with wind off the left, water on the right and sitting in the rough. Thankfully, I had a good lie so I hit kind of a hard pitching wedge and caught a flier end it ended up being the perfect number to seven or eight feet and I knocked it in.”

He said that wasn’t his best birdie of the day even though he dropped an 18-footer on the 401-yard 12th hole. That didn’t come until five holes later on the 221-yard 17th.

He knocked a 5-iron to about 20 feet and faced a testy, left-to-right putt that straightened out over the last two feet.

“That might have been the best of the day,” he said. “My caddie gave me a good read and I was able to make it.”

His seventh birdie of the day tied him with Cincinnati’s Hall, also an OSU product who has contended in several Ohio Opens.

Westerville’s Khan, who will be a senior at Ball State this fall, highlighted his round with an eagle – one of 20 eagles shot down on the day – on the 358-yard third, his 12th hole of the day.

His second shot from 134 yards landed about five yards in front of the green and found its way to the hole.

“It was pretty electric,” said Khan, who attended Columbus Academy and was a part of Ball State’s Mid-American Conference championship team.

Khan, 22, birdied the first from 14 feet and the 13th from 15 feet while suffering just one bogey.

Play resumes Tuesday at 7:45 a.m. with the field of 288 being trimmed to the top 60 and ties for Wednesday’s final round, which will be played on the South.

SOME NOTES: Balcar’s 65 was the only score posted below par (70) by the 11 former champions in the field . . . TT Crouch, the 2016 champ, and Tim Ailes (2014) were next at one-over 71 and three-time champion Bob Sowards was next as one of 33 players tied for 63d and lumped at 72 . . . The South Course yielded 11 eagles to nine on the North and surrendered 316 birdies to the North’s 263 . . . Oddly, both sides had 110 double bogeys . . . The three ladies in the field – Kent State-bound Isabella Goyette (77) and professionals, Alliance’s Mary Suitca (76) and West Chester’s Melissa Yeazell (84) might struggle to make the cut, as will Westlake’s Patrick Myers (78), the youngest player in the field at 14-years-old.
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