TPC Deere Run turned up its usual trick on Thursday: a course that looks gentle enough on the card until someone actually goes low, and then it turns out half the field can do it. By the time play wrapped in the Illinois heat, Lucas Glover and Zac Blair sat tied at the top at eight-under 63, and the leaderboard behind them read like a highlight reel rather than a golf tournament.
Glover’s round had a familiar shape to it. The 2021 champion at Deere Run built his number patiently, stacking birdies without ever threatening a mistake, and finished the day without a bogey to his name. It is the sort of round that suggests a player entirely comfortable with a course he already owns a piece of.
Blair chases a first win, 234 starts in
Blair’s story carries more weight. This was his 234th career PGA Tour start without a victory, a number that puts him on a short list of players who have simply never had their week. Patrick Rodgers, Mark Hubbard, Beau Hossler, Denny McCarthy and Doug Ghim make up the rest of that list, and all of them are in the field this week. Whether the tie at the top holds up over the weekend or gets swallowed by the chasing pack, Blair at least gave himself three more rounds to change what has so far been a long and patient career.
Eagles at the seventeenth, an ace at the sixteenth
Behind the leaders, TPC Deere Run’s back nine did most of the entertaining. The drivable par-five seventeenth produced nine eagles across the field on Thursday alone, the ninth coming from Will Gordon, who chipped in from 41 yards after Kevin Yu had already made the hole’s eighth of the day. A few holes earlier, Davis Riley aced the 150-yard sixteenth, the first hole-in-one recorded on Tour this year, a shot that briefly moved him into the top dozen before the leaders pulled away again.
Nobody had a stranger day than Ben Griffin. He made a quadruple-bogey eight at the par-four fourteenth, his fifth hole over par of the round, and looked to be heading for an afternoon best forgotten. Instead he eagled the seventeenth and circled four more holes on his back nine to post a 69, a score that had no business coming out of a round that included a snowman. It is the kind of card that only really makes sense in golf, where a genuine disaster and a genuine highlight can sit on the same scorecard and somehow add up to a good day’s work.
Ben Griffin is the only player since January to make a quad and still finish the round under par 🤯
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) July 2, 2026
He played the next 11 holes in 6-under. pic.twitter.com/DoLpTGhRpk
Jordan Spieth’s day went the other way. Two early birdies had him building nicely, before a lipped-out putt on the reachable seventeenth and then a ball in the water on the next hole turned promise into a double bogey and a round that never quite recovered.
A field with plenty of stories to tell
The John Deere Classic has always had a slightly different character to the rest of the Tour calendar, sitting the week before The Open and drawing a field built as much on hometown loyalty as on world ranking points. This year’s edition added a proper debut to go with the returning faces. Jackson Koivun, fresh off leading Auburn to the NCAA title in May, made his first start as a professional, the third player to reach the Tour through the PGA Tour University Accelerated pathway. Defending champion Brian Campbell is also around, chasing a repeat that nobody has managed at Deere Run since Steve Stricker won three in a row from 2009 to 2011.
Patrick Rodgers, who arrived among the week’s more sympathetic storylines given his own place on that list of winless veterans, withdrew before his round with a back injury. Austin Cook stepped in as a late replacement.
Storms in the forecast
The heat that baked Silvis on Thursday is expected to build into thunderstorms over the coming days, which could complicate a weekend that already has plenty to settle. Glover has been here before and knows exactly how to finish a Sunday at Deere Run. Blair is chasing something he has never had. Somewhere further back, Griffin, Spieth, Koivun and the rest will be trying to turn Thursday’s chaos into a number that matters on Sunday afternoon.