Aaron Rai lies third at Wyndham, Bhatia and Theegala trail far back

Greensboro (US), Aug 1 (PTI) Aaron Rai made a strong start to his title defence at the Wyndham Championship, firing a sensational seven-under 63 in the opening round here.

Rai was Tied third in his bid to become the first player to successfully defend the title at the Wyndham Championship since Sam Snead in 1956.

Joel Dahmen led the field with a 61 and Alex Noren (62) was second.

Rai shared the third place with Colombian Nico Echavarria, Americans Cameron Young and Mark Hubbard.

Indo-British Rai had eight birdies against one bogey.

Indian American Akshay Bhatia, who is also assured of the first play-offs start, carded 2-under 68 and is Tied-64, while Sahith Theegala, who has been injured for a good part of the season, had a disappointing 2-over 72 and was T-131.

Theegala will find it tough to make the cut. He needs to win this season to make the play-offs.

Bhatia had four birdies against two bogeys, while Theegala had three birdies, three bogeys and a double bogey.

Rai, who started from the tenth and bogeyed the 14th, but made no mistakes after that, birdied the 15th, 17th and the 18th to make the turn at 2-under.

On his second nine, Rai birdied five times, including two sets of back-to-back birdies on the second and third and then again at seventh and eighth. In between, he had another gain on the fifth.

Last year Aaron made the Tour Championship and made cut in all four Majors this year.

Rai was 58th in the FedExCup standings before the start. Even though he is already in for the first Play-offs event, he is hoping to get closer to Top-50.

The top 50 after the first FedExCup Playoffs event not only advance to the next week, but they are guaranteed to get in all the USD 20 million Signature Events.

This season Rai had eight Top-25 finishes in 19 starts with a T4 at the Mexico Open at VidantaWorld being his lone top-10.

Following the Wyndham Championship, the top 70 players in the FedExCup standings will qualify for next week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship.

After the St. Jude Championship, the top 50 players will play the BMW Championship and then only the Top-30 will get to the Tour Championship. PTI ATK ATK