Matt Wallace leads; past champion Jon Rahm is lurking

DUBLIN, Ohio – When former U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover pulled up to the front gate at Muirfield Village Golf Club this week, he asked the attendant how he was doing.

“He said, ‘If I was any happier, I’d be dancing.’ I’d never heard that one before,” Glover said. “And then he followed that up by saying, ‘And nobody wants that, trust me.’ ”

On a warm, sunny Thursday at the Memorial, Englishman Matt Wallace danced around Jack’s Place to the tune of 4-under 68, the lowest score in the morning wave by a stroke over a handful of players.

Wallace, 33, hasn’t been too happy with his game of late. After notching his first PGA Tour win at the Corales Puntacana Championship in late March, he has missed the cut in five of his last seven cuts, including last week. But he took advantage of calm conditions in the morning and birdied five of his first nine holes, including sinking a 23-foot putt at the fifth hole.

When asked to describe where he was in the process of becoming the player he wants to be, Wallace said, “Close. Not there. I’m waiting for that Tiger moment. That, ‘Hello world,’ one. I feel my game is there to be able to compete with the best, I just haven’t done it and I haven’t shown that.”

But for one day, at least, Wallace coasted around the course designed by golf great Jack Nicklaus in his lowest score in seven total rounds here. The rest of the field found it to be tough sledding, including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who opened with 74, and Jason Day, who shot 76.

“I was on the 17th green there and I felt, this is what Jon Rahm does, these types of days. It must feel really nice,” Wallace recounted. “And I was like, yeah, it feels really good. Because I was playing great. So he does it a lot more times than I do. So that’s what I want to try and do. If I can keep doing that, I know that I can win when I’m in position to win. So try and do that a little bit more.”