Scheffler, Bhatia and Three Others Share the Lead After Birdie-Filled Opening Round
Stop us if you’ve heard this before…. Scottie Scheffler holds a lead at Albany during the Hero World Challenge. The two-time defending champion and world’s top-ranked player was one of five players to shoot a 6-under-par 66 during Thursday’s opening round. Scheffler is looking to become the first player in tournament history to win the event in three consecutive years after victories in 2023 and 2024.
Scheffler, the 19-time PGA TOUR winner and four-time major champion – including current-year titles at the 2025 PGA Championship and 2025 Open Championship – got off to a fast start with four birdies on the front nine. He added to that with consecutive birdies on the 13th, 14th and 15th holes to jump to the top of the leaderboard at 7-under. His only bogey of the day came on the 18th hole, dropping him into a tie for the lead with Akshay Bhatia, Sepp Straka, Wyndham Clark and J.J. Spaun.
Bhatia hit the opening tee shot of the tournament and set the pace early on. The smooth swinging lefty birdied the first hole, added an eagle on the par-4 seventh hole to go to 3-under-par, and he added back-nine birdies on the 14th, 15th, and 18th holes.
Straka is no stranger to playing well at Albany. 2025 marks his fourth start at the Hero World Challenge, and in 2023 he finished behind only Scheffler on the final leaderboard. Overall, Straka has never finished in the bottom half of leaderboard and he seems poised for another good week at Albany.
Clark and Spaun, a pair of U.S. Open champions, also find themselves tied for the lead. Clark won the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club. Spaun, the reigning U.S. Open champion and Los Angeles native, is making his tournament debut after capturing his major victory this June. Spaun is teeing it up in a tournament he once attended as a kid at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
The five players tied atop the leaderboard will be forced to continue their hot play in the coming rounds. Eighteen of the 20 players shot even-par or better on Thursday.
The second round of the 2025 Hero World Challenge gets underway at 10:51 a.m. ET on Friday at Albany. Second-round TV coverage can be found on GOLF Channel from 1:30-4:30 p.m. ET. Saturday’s and Sunday’s TV coverage will be on GOLF Channel and NBC.