Associated Press
Feb 27, 2025, 12:01 PM ET
Jake Knapp joined the PGA Tour's sub-60 club on Thursday.
Knapp, the No. 99 player in golf's world rankings, shot a bogey-free 59 in the opening round of the Cognizant Classic at PGA National, the 15th time that someone has broken 60 in a PGA Tour event.
He missed an 18-foot, 8-inch eagle opportunity at No. 18 that would have tied the tour scoring record of 58, done by Jim Furyk in the final round of the 2016 Travelers Championship.
Knapp rolled in the birdie putt to become the 14th player to shoot a sub-60 round; it has been done 15 times, with Furyk carding such a round twice. Knapp is the sixth player in PGA Tour history to break 60 without an eagle on the card and the first since Scottie Scheffler at The Northern Trust in August 2020.
The 12-birdie round on the par-71 course broke the Cognizant scoring record of 61, first done in 2012 by Brian Harman and matched in 2021 by Matt Jones. There are three rounds of 62 in tournament history: Tiger Woods in the final round in 2012 on his way to a tie for second, Brandon Hagy in the second round in 2021 and eventual winner Chris Kirk in the second round of the 2023 event.
There was barely any wind, and PGA National was largely defenseless in the morning session. The closest there was to any trouble was the seventh hole, where Billy Horschel -- a Florida Gator from his college days -- used a club to poke at an actual alligator that was catching some sun near the green and got it to retreat back to its watery home.
Even that was easy on Thursday morning. But nobody had an easier time than Knapp, who finished no better than a tie for 17th in any of his first seven starts of 2025 before playing his way into golf history in Round 1 at PGA National.
Knapp has one PGA Tour win, at last year's Mexico Open. He has played the Cognizant once before and did well, tying for fourth last year after shooting three rounds of 68 or better and finishing at 13 under.
He started Thursday with five straight birdies, that stretch highlighted by a 60-foot putt at the par-4 second hole. The birdies kept coming in bunches: three in a row on holes 9 through 11 then three more coming on holes 13 through 15 -- the last of those a big breaking putt from 31 feet, going across the green before dropping dead center into the cup.
A 12-footer for birdie on the par-3 17th hit the outside right edge of the cup and spun off, leaving him at 11 under with only the par-5 finishing hole left.
A 335-yard tee shot left him 200 yards to the hole at No. 18, and a simple two-putt was all that remained to cap the history-making round.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
