Corey Conners hopes he and Maple Leafs can turn around 'horrendous' scores quick

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Corey Conners hopes both he and his favourite hockey team will be playing this weekend.

Canada’s top-ranked golfer opened his PGA Championship at Quail Hollow with a two-over par 73 and the normally stoic Conners was visibly unhappy with his opening round.

“I’m really disappointed with the score. I felt like I hit the ball fine,” he said after the round. “I gave myself some looks, or got myself in decent positions, just scored the ball horrendously.”

Horrendous is a word that could be easily thrown around for Conners’ favourite hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, after Wednesday’s 6-1 humiliation has them facing elimination on Friday night in Florida versus the Panthers.

Conners seemed even less interested in re-hashing the Leafs’ Game 5 embarrassment than discussing his own problems.

“I don’t really want to talk about the Leafs last night,” he said. “Hopefully they can regroup, and I can regroup, and we can both play well on the weekend.”

As for the season’s second major in Charlotte, Conners will need to get things going on the greens where he missed numerous putts on Thursday, including a three-foot bogey putt on the par-3 17th where he made double bogey, and a round-closing nine-foot birdie miss at the par-4 ninth hole.

“Anytime I had a decent look for birdie I wasn’t able to knock it in, and I had some sloppy bogeys throughout the round,” he said. “I definitely felt like the putter let me down and I couldn’t get any momentum going with that.”