Paul Waring saw this round coming, but he might’ve been the only one.
The 41-year-old Englishman’s 7-under 63 Thursday at Memorial Park was as improbable as it was impressive. Waring leads the Texas Children’s Houston Open by two shots despite entering the week having missed the cut or withdrawn from 17 of his last 21 worldwide starts.
Granted Waring was shelved for much of the second half of last year while rehabbing a shoulder injury, which knocked him out of the Genesis Scottish Open last July. But he’d already missed 10 of 11 cuts before that as a PGA Tour rookie. His T-27 at the Dubai Invitational earlier this year on the DP World Tour marked his best finish in over a year.
Sam Burns, Michael Brennan and Tom Hoge, all three PGA Tour winners, are tied for second behind Waring.
“To be fair, I found a little bit of momentum coming forward in the last few weeks,” Waring said, likely raising a few eyebrows.
But let him explain: “I know I missed cuts at Valspar and Cognizant, but I felt like my golf game was in a good spot, I just gave too many shots away in the first few weeks, where this week, a lot tidier, no bogeys and holed a good amount of footage today.”
Over 160 feet of putts to be exact.
Waring rolled in 12-footers for birdie at Nos. 12 and 13, then capped his first nine with back-to-back crucial makes, 18 feet for par after driving his ball into the water at the par-4 17th and a 40-footer for birdie at the par-4 18th. He added birdies from 30 feet at No. 5 and 7 feet at No. 6, then had a clutch par save at the par-5 eighth, where he played his second shot from the edge of the greenside pond, splashing to 20 feet and two-putting.
“It’s a long golf course, and it was soft when we first arrived, there was no run in the fairways, and I was thinking this is going to be a bit of a battle, especially going up against players like Marco Penge, and obviously Jesper Svensson, who I played with today, who are giving me 20, 30 yards,” Waring said. “I lent on my iron play and, as I say, the putter really behaved itself today.”
Waring led the field with over five strokes gained putting, while he was a respectable top 60 in driving distance, averaging over 306 yards off the tee on a layout that is massively forgiving to long, wayward hitters. Waring’s speed took a while to return following his shoulder issue, which derailed his first full season on the PGA Tour. The two-time DPWT winner, including at the 2024 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, called last year a “battle.”
“I had a cortisone injection in my shoulder,” Waring said. “I was playing with it taped up most weeks. I was on painkillers just trying to get through it.”
Now, though? “I’m fit, I feel like my old self again. I feel like I can go play a little bit.”
He proved it Thursday with a round almost nobody saw coming.