With four straight birdies before a par on his last hole, one could mistake the Jacob Bridgeman fans saw in the first round in Japan on Thursday as the exact same player who helped the U.S. win the Presidents Cup two weeks ago at Medinah.
For Bridgeman though, he swears he’s still shaking off the rust from a break that included limited practice and a trip to Maine to see his sister get married.
“I felt a little rusty to be honest, but I was able to score the ball well and I felt like I put the ball in positions where when I made a little mistake, it was pretty easy to recover,” said Bridgeman, who won on Tour for the first time in his career at Riviera in February and found the winner’s circle again at the inaugural Biltmore Championship to start the fall season.
The 26-year-old Clemson grad was one of the Sunday heroes who helped spark the Americans rally to hold off the International side in what turned out to be a historically lopsided 9 1/2 to 2 1/2 singles session.
“I don’t know if any team’s ever won that many points on Sunday so it was pretty cool to kind of see the red on the board the whole day and just kind of ride that momentum,” Bridgeman told reporters after his bogey-free first round at the Yokohama Country Club, where he’s making his professional Japanese debut this week. “I wouldn’t say I was fatigued or anything after, I just kind of wanted to take a little bit of a rest. We’re technically in the offseason so just wanted to take a little rest and have some family time.”
Jacob Bridgeman opens the first round of the Baycurrent Classic with a bogey-free 8-under 63, matching his lowest opening-round score on Tour (2024 3M Open/finished T19).
— PGA Tour Communications (@PGATourComms) October 8, 2026
63 marks best first-round score since the event moved to Yokohama Country Club:
63, Taylor Moore, 2024, R1,… https://t.co/tBVDt4r87R
Bridgeman, who drew the attention of captain Brandt Snedeker with his lights-out putter which ranks No. 1 on Tour, sits at 8 under and a shot ahead Jordan Smith entering the second round.
Max Homa sits in a tie for third with three other players at six under.
“My sleeping’s been all over the place to be honest,” said Smith, who admitted he didn’t have his best stuff on Thursday despite a 7 under that would say otherwise. “The first couple nights I’ve been up at 3:00 a.m. and going to bed at 6:00 p.m. so it’s been a bit all over. It’s getting there slowly. Yeah, I’m in the same boat as everyone else but, yeah, it is what it is.”
For everyone in the field, the deficit could have been larger.
Bridgeman had a lip-out at the par-5 fourth which would have given him six birdies on his final nine holes in Japan.
“I was kind of bummed not to birdie ... I hit really four good shots there and just the putt lipped out,” he said of the par that led to the run of four straight birdies at holes Nos 5 through 8.
“I don’t really think I did anything special, I didn’t kind of change any of the game plan,” said Bridgeman of that stretch. “Played very conservative even kind of the whole day. I just put myself in some pretty good spots on the greens and I had a lot of straight kind of uphill putts.”
