Rory McIlroy four off the lead after opening round of FedEx St Jude Championship

Rory McIlroy is four shots off the lead of Jordan Spieth after the first round of the FedEx St Jude Championship, the first tournament of the FedEx Cup playoffs on the PGA Tour.

The Irish golfer split three bogeys with four birdies and an eagle, the eagle a headline moment, a six iron from just over 200 yards to a foot on the 16th hole.

Séamus Power is well back of the lead on one over, but with no cut in the event he has three days to catch up on lead.

Spieth shot seven under par with a score of 63 and goes into round two in Memphis leading Tom Kim by one shot and admitted he has been working on his putting.

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Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy two shots off the lead in New Orleans

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Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry tied for the lead at the Zurich Classic

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“Quite a bit of putting. I played really well at the British. Tee to green, I played well enough to win,” he said afterwards.

“I didn’t feel like I missed many of my lines. I just couldn’t quite get the matching of the line and speed on the greens.

“Now we come to slopey Bermuda and very fast slopey Bermuda where I feel a little more comfortable picking lines and kind of feeding the ball in using gravity.

“I think that helped, along with quite a bit of work as best I could in Texas right now, which is really from the hours of 7am to noon before it’s almost unbearable.

“Just tightened some things up. I tried to play a lot just to shoot scores. I had kind of taken off playing a bunch, and I think that that helped a bit in the last couple weeks.”