Jordan Spieth leads by one after first round of FedEx St Jude Championship

PA Sport Staff

Jordan Spieth topped the leaderboard after round one of the FedEx St Jude Championship, where he scored seven under par with a score of 63.

He goes into round two in Memphis leading Tom Kim by one shot and admitted he has been working on his putting.

“Quite a bit of putting. I played really well at the British. Tee to green, I played well enough to win,” he said afterwards.

“I didn’t feel like I missed many of my lines. I just couldn’t quite get the matching of the line and speed on the greens.

“Now we come to slopey Bermuda and very fast slopey Bermuda where I feel a little more comfortable picking lines and kind of feeding the ball in using gravity.

“I think that helped, along with quite a bit of work as best I could in Texas right now, which is really from the hours of 7:00 a.m to noon before it’s almost unbearable.

“Just tightened some things up. I tried to play a lot just to shoot scores. I had kind of taken off playing a bunch, and I think that that helped a bit in the last couple weeks.”

Rory McIlroy sits on three under, after he split three bogeys with four birdies and an eagle.

Meanwhile, England’s Tommy Fleetwood and Aaron Rai are the best of the British contingent, closing out Thursday on four under par.