The first round of the RBC Canadian Open produced the sort of leaderboard that takes a moment to read out loud. Six players share the top of it at six under par, all of them having signed for 64 at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley, and the list runs from a five-time major champion to a local lad from Mississauga who played his way into the last group of the day and refused to leave the premises quietly.
Brooks Koepka, Sam Burns, Sahith Theegala, Eric Cole, Emiliano Grillo and Canada’s Matthew Anderson — that is the sextet, and each of them arrived at the number by a different road. With the majority of the field under par on a receptive Caledon parkland and precious little daylight between the lead and the cut line, nobody up there will be planning a quiet Friday. But an opening day this congested still managed to tell a few distinct stories, and the loudest of them belonged to Koepka.
The putter shows up
Koepka’s return to the PGA Tour this season has been a study in almost. The iron play, which has carried him all year, has produced a steady run of top-twenty finishes without once threatening to produce a trophy, and the bottleneck has rarely been a mystery. On Thursday, for once, the putts went in. He ranked inside the top five in strokes gained putting for the round — territory he visits about as often as a links course visits Ontario — and capped the day with a late run of birdies that nearly became something better still, his approach at one of the closing holes shaving the hole on the way past.
The context makes the round more interesting than the score. Koepka has yet to play his way into a signature event this season, and with only the Travelers Championship left in that category after next week’s US Open, the arithmetic is simple: he needs a big week, and soon. A player of his record reduced to chasing starts is one of the stranger sights of the 2026 season, and it would be very like him to resolve the matter abruptly.
Burns keeps trending
If Koepka’s 64 was a surprise of method, Sam Burns’s was a continuation. Fresh from fourth place at the Memorial, Burns has spent two months quietly rebuilding the part of his game that used to lag — the approach play — and the improvement has been measurable for weeks, gaining strokes off the tee and into the greens to go with a putter that has never needed help. He has not won on Tour since 2023, which feels longer ago than it is, and on current form he is the most complete player on this leaderboard. The oddsmakers agreed by Thursday evening, installing him as the tournament favourite.
Theegala, who posted his 64 before anyone else, showed flashes of the form that made him one of the hottest players on Tour early in the year. Cole has now spent three consecutive weeks loitering near the top of leaderboards, and there is no obvious reason the fourth should be different. Grillo arrived on the high of qualifying for the US Open on Monday and simply kept riding it.
The local angle
And then there is Matthew Anderson, of Mississauga, half an hour down the road, who went out in the day’s final group and surged late to join the leaders at six under. A Canadian has not won this championship since Pat Fletcher in 1954, a drought that has outlived every player in the field, and the country’s golf public greets each June with the same mixture of hope and armour. Anderson sharing the lead on Thursday evening guarantees nothing — first rounds never do — but the cheer that followed him up the final holes suggested nobody in attendance was bothering with caution. He and Adam Svensson, a shot back at five under alongside Shane Lowry and Tony Finau, will carry the flag into Friday.
A crowded weekend ahead
The shape of the week from here is easy enough to sketch. TPC Toronto gave up low scores all day, and a bunched leaderboard on a gettable course tends to stay bunched until the back nine on Sunday sorts it out. Lurking over all of it is next week’s US Open at Shinnecock Hills, which has shaped fields and priorities all month — some stars are here sharpening, others are resting on Long Island already.
But that is next week’s story. This week’s is a six-way tie with a major champion rediscovering his putter, the Tour’s form player confirming his form, and a Mississauga golfer sleeping on a share of the lead at his national open. Opening Thursdays rarely offer more.