Staff WriterMarcus Armitage lit up Golf de Saint-Nom-La-Bretèche with a stretch of scoring that would make even Seve grin from the heavens, carding eight birdies in ten holes to storm into a two-shot lead after day one of the FedEx Open de France.
The Englishman’s mid-round blitz carried him to a swashbuckling seven-under-par 64 in Paris, leaving him two clear of home favourite Julien Guerrier and Australia’s Min Woo Lee at five under. If golf is supposed to be a four-hour stroll ruined by a small white ball, Armitage missed the memo.
He opened with a birdie at the second, coughed it straight back, then stuffed an approach to two feet at the sixth. That was the spark. Suddenly the putter went red-hot, and the Birdie Factory opened for business.
“I was hitting it pretty close and just the putts started to drop. I think I one-putted every green for that space of holes,” Armitage said afterwards, looking as though he’d discovered the cheat code to this game. “You do [get momentum] with a putter. Once you see a few go in, you get on a run, and you know, then you just feel like you’re just moving the putter and picking it out of the hole.”
The Mancunian marched to the turn in 33, then rattled off six consecutive birdies, including back-to-back bombs from 18 and 13 feet on 11 and 12. A 12-footer at the 15th added icing to the gâteau, though a scruffy bogey at 17 served as a reminder that he is, in fact, human.
Behind him, Guerrier kept the tricolour flying with a gritty five-under, capped by a sandy par save at the last that had the gallery purring. Lee matched him, finishing with a flurry of four straight birdies.
“I was pretty in control, which was nice,” said Lee, smiling like a man who’d just found out croissants have no calories. “Just a few putts didn’t drop early. So finished off with four birdies in a row which is very, very nice. It was deserving, I guess, with the shots that I was hitting.”
The chasing pack includes Ugo Coussaud, Maximilian Kieffer, Marcus Kinhult, Jens Dantorp, Keita Nakajima, Jorge Campillo and England’s Sam Bairstow, all tucked in at four under.
And if Armitage provided the fireworks, Spain’s Pablo Ereno delivered the party trick: a hole-in-one at the 153-yard seventh. The ace was one of 13 eagles on Thursday, each of which means another tree planted through the tournament’s Eagles for Good initiative with FedEx and the Arbor Day Foundation. Golf saving the planet, one lucky bounce at a time.
As round two of the FedEx Open de France looms, Armitage’s putter may well decide whether his birdie avalanche turns into a weekend landslide—or just another Parisian cameo in a city that’s seen it all.
