By RENALDO DORSETT

Tribune Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

Daniel Berger, Abraham Ancer and Rory McIlroy lead the field by a single stroke and are tied atop the leaderboard following day one of the Hero World Challenge.

The trio shot an opening round 66 (-6) at the Albany Golf Course yesterday.

In a field where 17 of the 20 players are ranked in the top 25 in the world, Daniel Berger returned from a two-month break to have an impressive showing on day one.

“I thought the course was in unbelievable shape. The greens have slowly gotten better and better as the week has gone on. I mean, if you hit the putt where you’re looking, there’s a good chance they’re going to go in,” Berger said following the round.

“I took a little over a month completely off for golf, didn’t touch a golf club, and slowly started ramping it up, and the last two or three weeks I’ve been playing more golf here and there, and the last 10 days I played every day and I’ve been playing really nicely. And it’s just tough when you haven’t played competitively to kind of get back in the rhythm of things, but obviously, I got off to a good start and that made it easier.”

Berger will enter 2022 without a FedEx Cup point after not playing any tournaments in the fall.

“I think you have to listen to your body and you have to listen to how you feel mentally,” he said. “The Ryder Cup was gruelling and it took so much out of me physically and emotionally that I just didn’t feel I could go to a golf tournament to prepare the way I wanted to the best of my ability, so for me it was the only decision to make.

McIlroy, who previously competed at Hero events in Sherwood, said his return to the Albany course was a welcome one as he overcame a slight miscalculation at the backend of the front nine.

“It was great. I’ve played this course a lot over the years being a member here for a few years and it’s a little different. You don’t quite see the trouble and the water as much in practice as you do when you’ve got a scorecard in your hand.

“Yeah, it’s a little different. I always used to think this place was very wide open and could sort of just wail on drivers everywhere, but once you get a card in your hand and you start to play the way you normally play in a tournament, everything just starts to tighten up a little bit.

“It was good. The wind got up a little bit, it was tricky coming in there, it was a tough finish and I was happy with how I played,” he said. “I think I played well enough to shoot a better score than that. I played the par fives in even par and like five par fives here, I should be taking care of those, so that’s something I’m going to need to do over the next three days because I can’t rely on doing what I did today. I made three twos out there, one on a par four. I need to take care of the par fives just to make it a little more stress free.”

McIlroy finished with a five-under-par 31, including an eagle on the par four 14. “On the 9th I pulled my tee shot but got away with it and sort of kicked around that fairway bunker and had enough club to get there in two, so I was trying to pull a shot off and I didn’t and ended up making a double from it,” he said.

“Happy with how I responded on the back nine after that. Played the back nine in five under par. It was a nice little response to not quite a mental error. I mean, I committed to the shot, I just didn’t make a great swing. Yeah, it was nice to play the back nine the way I did and put myself back in the tournament.

Brooks Koepka is among a group of three players, along with Webb Simpson and Justin Thomas, tied for fourth at -5.

“I thought the first 14 holes were pretty good, or 13, whatever it was, up to the par three. Then just got a little sloppy with the driver. Made that bogey and then didn’t birdie the drivable par four, the par five. So a little disappointing, but at the same time I didn’t shoot myself out of it, so I’m all right,” Koepka said. “I think especially with like the equipment changes I’ve made, I’m very, very happy, very pleased. It’s been very easy, which is a good thing. Just need to start swinging it good. I’m pretty close, not all the way there, but it’s very, very close.”

Thomas is playing his first rounds of golf since he had LASIK surgery approxiamately a week and-a-half ago.

“I’ve been wanting to do it for a while and it finally just worked out with the schedule to get it done. That’s why I keep walking around with the sunglasses. I don’t wear those too often, just trying to protect the eyes. Yeah, it was nice to get that done a week and a half ago and try to put it to the test here this week,” Thomas said.

“I mean, it obviously was a poor finish, but I mean, I played well. Got off to a good start and just kind of hit a lull there in the middle, but hit a lot of really, really good putts that didn’t go in or felt like it could have been a really, really low round. It was windy enough out there to where five under’s a good score.”

Round two begins today with defending champion Henrik Stenson and Harris English in the first group at 10:55am.