PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Jake Knapp joined the PGA Tour’s sub-60 club on Thursday.
Knapp — the No. 99 player in golf’s current 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.
Knapp finished one shot off the tour scoring record of 58, done by Jim Furyk in the final round of the 2016 Travelers Championship. Knapp became the 14th player to shoot a sub-60 round; it has been done 15 times, with Furyk the one who has carded such a round twice.
Knapp had a putt for eagle at the par-5 18th that would have tied Furyk’s mark of 58 — 18 feet, 8 inches was the measurement given by the PGA Tour. The eagle putt didn’t have the speed and he tapped in for 59.
The 12-birdie round on the par-71 course also broke the previous 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 — and then played his way into golf history in Round 1 at PGA National.
Knapp has one PGA Tour win, that coming at last year’s Mexico Open. He’s played the Cognizant only once before and did well, tying for fourth last year after shooting three rounds of 68 or better and finishing at 13 under.
And this year, so far, he’s even better.
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, 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.
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