HOUSTON, Texas Memorial Park opened for business on Thursday under partly cloudy skies, an 85-degree afternoon, and a south wind that gusted to 20 miles per hour. At 7,475 yards and a par of 70, this is one of the longer examinations the TOUR administers all spring, and the first round sorted the field accordingly. Only one man reached 7-under. He was, by almost any measure available, the least probable name on the property.
Paul Waring is 41 years old. He is playing this season on a Major Medical Extension. He has made three starts in 2026 and missed the cut in all of them, most recently at last week's Valspar Championship. In 26 career PGA TOUR starts he has a single top-10 finish, at the 2019 WGC-HSBC Champions. His only previous visit to this tournament, a year ago, produced rounds of 76 and 72 and an early flight home. On Thursday he went around Memorial Park in 63 strokes without a bogey, the lowest round of his TOUR career, and took the outright lead. It is the first time, after any round, that he has ever held or shared the lead on the PGA TOUR.
The round that came from the putter
The 63 was built on the greens, and the numbers describe something close to a perfect putting day. Waring holed 161 feet, 10 inches of putts, the most of his career, comfortably past the 136 feet, 9 inches he managed in the first round of the 2025 Genesis Scottish Open. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting at 5.342, and when he missed a green he tidied up without complaint: four scrambles attempted, four converted, tied for the best mark in the field.
His previous low on TOUR was 65, done twice, most recently in the opening round of the 2025 RBC Canadian Open. Thursday beat it by two, on a longer and sterner golf course, in wind. Waring is trying to become the third Englishman to win this event, after Paul Casey in 2009 and Ian Poulter in 2018, and while 54 holes is a long way to carry a first-ever lead, the manner of the round mattered as much as the number. Nothing about it was fragile except the résumé behind it.
The pursuer with the résumé
One shot back, at 6-under 64, sits Gary Woodland, and the contrast between the top two lines of the leaderboard could hardly be sharper. Woodland has four TOUR titles, among them the 2019 U.S. Open, and his 64 equaled the best opening round of his career, a score he has now posted seven times, most recently at the 2024 Sanderson Farms Championship.
He also has unfinished business at this address. Woodland was runner-up here a year ago, and he is bidding to become the first player to finish second at a tournament and then win it the following season since Robert MacIntyre did so at the Genesis Scottish Open in 2023 and 2024. A 64 is precisely how such a campaign should begin.
Behind him at 5-under 65 are Sam Burns, Michael Brennan, and Tom Hoge. Burns knows this place as well as anyone near the top; in four previous starts at the event he posted back-to-back finishes of seventh at Memorial Park in 2020 and 2021, and his opening round suggests the fit remains.
The shot that mattered
The day's most complete swing belonged to a man playing on a sponsor exemption in his hometown. Cole Hammer, the Houston native and University of Texas alum, took a 9-iron to the par-3 15th from 136 yards and holed it. It was the first ace of his TOUR career, and the first hole-in-one recorded on the 15th since the tournament moved to Memorial Park in 2020. Hammer sits tied for 11th at 3-under, which is the sort of sentence Houston galleries will happily read again on Friday morning.
The longest putt of the day, and of this tournament's residence at Memorial Park, belonged to Chris Gotterup, who rolled in a 72-footer for birdie at the par-4 18th, the longest putt of his career and the longest made on any hole at the Texas Children's Houston Open. It moved him to 2-under, tied for 31st, which says something about how much work even the spectacular still leaves at a course this long.
The defense begins quietly
Min Woo Lee opened his title defense with a 2-under 68, tied for 31st. He is attempting something genuinely uncommon: only Vijay Singh, in 2005 at the Golf Club of Houston, has ever successfully defended this championship. Sixty-eight keeps the project alive without advancing it much.
The event's other past champions fared better. Stephan Jaeger, the 2024 winner, sits tied for sixth at 4-under, while Adam Scott and Tony Finau opened at 3-under, tied for 11th alongside Hammer. Four former champions inside the top 31 after one round is a reminder that Memorial Park rewards acquaintance.
There is also a quieter tournament running inside this one. The top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking at the end of this week earn invitations to the Masters, and the bubble is well represented in Houston. Nicolai Højgaard, ranked 47th, and Michael Thorbjornsen, ranked 56th, each opened at 2-under; Rickie Fowler, at 61st, posted 3-under; Jake Knapp, holding the 42nd spot, managed only 1-under. Every shot this week carries a second ledger for those men.
The field thinned by one before a ball was struck: Aaron Rai withdrew with a neck injury and was replaced by Taylor Moore, who promptly opened at 3-under.
What Friday demands
The leaderboard is compressed in the way long, par-70 golf courses tend to compress things. Seven under leads, 2-under is tied for 31st, and the cut line will not be generous to anyone who idles. Lee needs a round in the mid-60s to make his defense a story rather than a footnote. The Masters bubble men need to keep climbing, because the reward for the week's work is measured in more than FedExCup points.
At the top, the question is the oldest one in the sport. Woodland has spent a career learning how to follow a good round with another. Waring, on the evidence of the record book, has never been asked to. He has 18 holes on Friday to begin answering, and a putter that just gave him 161 feet of reasons to believe he can.