LA QUINTA, Calif. The American Express opened on Thursday under a mostly cloudy sky, a high of 72 degrees, and a northeast breeze that never exceeded eight miles per hour. In the Coachella Valley in January, that is not weather; it is an invitation. The tournament spreads its field across three courses in the opening rounds, the professionals rotating through the Pete Dye Stadium Course, the Nicklaus Tournament Course, and La Quinta Country Club with amateur partners for company, and each venue made its own arrangement with the field. The Nicklaus Course surrendered a scoring average of 66.75. La Quinta Country Club gave up 67.43. The Stadium Course, the sternest of the three, held the line at 70.69, which in this valley qualifies as resistance.
By evening, two men had posted 10-under 62, both at the Nicklaus Course, and nine more sat a single shot behind. The leaderboard is less a hierarchy than a queue.
Seven birdies, unbroken
If the day had a signature, it was written on the back nine by Pierceson Coody. Playing his 55th PGA TOUR start, Coody went out in the sort of quiet that attracts no cameras, then birdied every hole from the 11th through the 17th, seven in succession, the longest birdie streak of his career on TOUR. The run built a back-nine 29 and a bogey-free 62, the second-lowest score of his professional life; only a 61 in the first round of the 2024 ISCO Championship, where he eventually tied for second, sits below it in his ledger.
That ISCO week is also the only other time Coody has held or shared an 18-hole lead out here, which gives Thursday a familiar shape for him without any of the familiarity of results. His last season produced two top-10s in 17 starts and a finish of No. 110 in the FedExCup Fall standings; his 2026 status came the harder way, through a No. 12 finish on the Korn Ferry Tour points list. He arrived in the desert from a tie for 13th at last week's Sony Open in Hawaii, which is to say he arrived playing well, and then played better.
The other 62
Min Woo Lee matched him from a different direction. Lee's 62 was the lowest round of his 69 career starts, beating a pair of 63s, and the second of those 63s repays a moment's attention: it came in the third round of the 2025 Texas Children's Houston Open, the week Lee converted his considerable reputation into his first PGA TOUR title. A three-time winner on the DP World Tour, Lee has never before held or shared the lead after any round on this tour; his previous best overnight position was a tie for third at the 2025 Rocket Classic.
This is his first start of the new season and only his second appearance at The American Express, where he tied for 21st in 2024. He finished No. 59 in the 2025 FedExCup Fall standings with two top-10s in 19 starts, numbers that have always seemed narrower than the talent. A Thursday like this one is how such gaps begin to close.
The queue at nine under
The group one shot back reads like a seeding committee's work. Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, opened his season with a bogey-free 63 at La Quinta Country Club, his lowest score in 19 career rounds at this event. There is no louder quiet statement available in professional golf than the best player posting nine under, without a dropped shot, in his first competitive round in months.
Si Woo Kim, the 2021 champion here, matched the number with a bogey-free 63 of his own at the Nicklaus Course. Kim's record at this tournament runs deep: three finishes of 11th or better in eight starts, including the win. Jason Day supplied the day's most impressive geography, a 9-under 63 on the Stadium Course, the low round of the day at the hardest address, his best score in 17 career rounds at the event, and the lowest anyone has managed on that course since Keith Mitchell's 62 in the final round of 2024. Patrick Cantlay reached the same total by volume, 10 birdies against a single bogey at the Nicklaus Course; his American Express record shows four top-10s in seven starts, including a runner-up in 2021.
The rest of the nine carries its own arguments. Ben Griffin has now opened inside the top eight after the first round in seven consecutive starts. Vince Whaley and S.H. Kim are both still waiting on a first TOUR title, and both just gave themselves 54 holes of runway. Robert MacIntyre and Matt McCarty complete the group.
One name further down deserves the paragraph anyway. Will Zalatoris, playing his first PGA TOUR event since back surgery in May 2025, made eight birdies at La Quinta Country Club and signed for 65, tied for 20th at 7-under. Whatever this week brings him, the swing held up for 18 holes and the scorecard looked like the old ones.
The defense stalls
The defending champion had the day's loneliest walk. Sepp Straka played La Quinta Country Club, the second-easiest course on the property Thursday, in level par: three birdies, a bogey, and a double bogey, for a tie for 131st. Nothing about this tournament forgives an even-par round. The field will spend three days writing red numbers, and a title defense that begins 10 shots behind is already a matter of arithmetic rather than form.
What Friday demands
The rotation now shuffles everyone to new ground, and the shuffle is the tournament's quiet tactician. A 62 at the Nicklaus Course and a 63 at the Stadium Course are the same number in the newspaper and very different achievements in fact; the schedule of who plays where, and when, will bend this leaderboard as surely as any swing. The leaders must keep pressing, because at a tournament where 66.75 is an average, par is a slow leak.
Lee will sleep tonight on the first lead of his PGA TOUR life, sharing it with a man who just birdied seven consecutive holes and has even less experience at the front. Behind them stand the world No. 1, a former champion of this event, and a 13-time TOUR winner, all within one. The desert made its offer on Thursday. Friday it finds out who keeps accepting.