Matsuyama one shot off lead days after being robbed at London airport

Hideki Matsuyama trails by one shot in the first event of the PGA Tour play-offs despite being without his caddie after his team were robbed during a stopover at a London airport after the Olympics.
The 2021 Masters champion told Golf Digest Japan that he had his wallet stolen, while the passports and visas of his caddie, Shota Hayato, and coach, Mikihito Kuromiya, were also taken while on a layover before travelling to Memphis, Tennessee, for the FedEx St Jude Championship. The 32-year-old’s Olympic bronze medal is safe, however.
Matsuyama said that Hayato and Kuromiya have returned to Japan and are working to get their documents reissued. The earliest they will be able to travel to the United States will be for the season-ending Tour Championship, which begins on August 29 at East Lake, Atlanta.
“There’s a chance they’ll make it, but we have to go into it thinking it’s close to zero,” Matsuyama, the world No 12, said.
At the FedEx St Jude Championship, Matsuyama struck seven birdies in a five-under-par opening round of 65. The event is the first of three season-ending tournaments, with 70 players battling for a place inside the top 50 of the FedEx Cup standings to make next week’s BMW Championship. That field will then be cut down to 30 players for the Tour Championship. Taiga Tabuchi, who caddied for Ryo Hisatsune earlier this year, is caddying for Matsuyama at TPC Southwind this week.
Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood are also in the chasing pack, two strokes behind Chris Kirk, who made a hole in one en route to taking the first-round lead.
The English duo both finished round one on four under par as Kirk made five birdies in a six-under round of 64. The American’s hole in one came at the 14th hole with a high tee shot that landed short and right of the pin before rolling into the cup.
Rose, who won the FedEx Cup in 2018 and was runner-up at the Open this summer, began the tournament 55th in the season standings and so requires a good performance to get inside the top 50 and reach next week.
The world No 1, Scottie Scheffler, is top of the PGA Tour standings heading into the play-offs but has questioned the methods to crown a season-long winner.
Scheffler has led the rankings heading into the season finale for the past two years but has failed to go all the way on either occasion. Rory McIlroy won in 2022, followed by Viktor Hovland’s triumph last year.
“I think it’s silly,” Scheffler, who is also on four under after the first round, said before the tournament. “You can’t call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament.
“Hypothetically we get to East Lake and my neck flares up and it doesn’t heal the way it did at the Players Championship, I finish 30th in the FedExCup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament. Is that really the season-long race? No. It is what it is.
“It’s a fun tournament. I don’t really consider it the season-long race like I think the way it’s called. But you’ve got to figure out a way to strike a balance between it being a good TV product and it still being a season-long race.
“Right now, I don’t know exactly how the ratings are or anything like that, but I know for a fact you can’t really quite call it the season-long race when it comes down to one strokeplay tournament on the same golf course each year.”