Daniel Berger made nine birdies in a bogey-free round to take a three-stroke lead at the Arnold Palmer Invitational golf championships in Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 32-year-old leads newly crowned Pebble Beach champion Collin Morikawa and Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg atop the leaderboard after the first round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
World number one Scottie Scheffler only managed a 70, while Rory McIlroy finished on even-par after an erratic round featuring five birdies and a double bogey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berger’s nine-under par round was only one stroke shy of tying the tournament course record of 62, most recently carded by Adam Scott in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American in his six starts this season, made only one top-10 finish, the T6 at the Sony Open in Hawaii. Berger, missed three months of golf last fall after breaking the ring finger on his right hand in August and is slowly but surely getting back to form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The four-time PGA Tour winner picked up three birdies on the front nine, but was sizzling with six on the back nine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Morikawa played his final three holes in 4-under with a eagle-birdie-birdie run for his 66, his lowest score in 17 career rounds in the event. The two-time major winner ended a two-year title drought with a victory at Pebble Beach in February and is looking to add to his tally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He showed his intent when he hit a flush seven-iron on the par-five 16th and followed it up with a 15-foot eagle putt before birdies at 17 and 18, where he drained a 27-foot putt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for \u00c5berg it was his best first-round score in five starts this season. He finished inside the top 25 in each of his three prior starts in the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scheffler tied-18th, winner of the 2022 and 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational is seeking to join Tiger Woods (eight wins) as the only players with at least three wins in the event. He has not finished worse than T15in five prior starts in the event. Defending champion Russell Henley also carded a two-under round. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coming off a win at last week\u2019s Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches, Nico Echavarria is tied-T33 on equal par with McIlroy and opened with a 6-under 30 on the front nine but blew up with a 6-over 42 on the back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
McIlroy found the water with his approach iron on the par-four 13th. Forced to take a drop, he again missed the green and had to settle for a double bogey. The 29 time PGA Tour winner had also bogeyed the fifth and 18th holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First-Round Leaderboard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Daniel Berger made nine birdies in a bogey-free round to take a three-stroke lead at the Arnold Palmer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-10195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-golf"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger.jpg",1520,876,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger-300x173.jpg",300,173,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger-768x443.jpg",640,369,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger-1024x590.jpg",640,369,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger.jpg",1520,876,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger.jpg",1520,876,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Newsbeat<\/a>","tag_info":"Newsbeat","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Daniel-Berger.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10197,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10195\/revisions\/10197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pos.<\/strong><\/td> Player<\/strong><\/td> Total<\/strong><\/td><\/tr> 1<\/td> Daniel Berger<\/td> 63 (-9)<\/td><\/tr> T2<\/td> Collin Morikawa<\/td> 66 (-6)<\/td><\/tr> T2<\/td> Ludvig \u00c5berg<\/td> 66 (-6)<\/td><\/tr> T4<\/td> Jhonattan Vegas<\/td> 67 (-5)<\/td><\/tr> T4<\/td> Cameron Young<\/td> 67 (-5)<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"