Steve Stricker, Duffy Waldorf co-lead senior major at Firestone

Defending champion Steve Stricker is tied with Duffy Waldorf atop the leaderboard at the Kaulig Companies Championship after Thursday's first round at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio.

At the major previously known as the Senior Players Championship, Stricker and Waldorf fired matching rounds of 4-under 66. They established a one-shot lead over Kenny Perry and Australia's Richard Green.

Close behind at 2-under 68 were Steven Alker of New Zealand, Angel Cabrera of Argentina, Steve Flesch, Tim O'Neal and Paul Stankowski.

Stricker, 57, has yet to win on the PGA Tour Champions this year but has 17 titles to his name, including seven majors. He also won the Senior Players in 2021 and was runner-up in 2022 before capturing his second title at Firestone in 2023.

"I have a lot of confidence going around here, I enjoy being here," Stricker said. "I have a pretty good idea how to play the course. I've seen a bunch of different wind conditions here, different firmness conditions. ... It's just trying to manage my game, I think, more than anything. It's trying to put together good swings and good putts."

Stricker opened with consecutive birdies and picked up his only bogey of the day at the par-4 sixth hole. He finished the front nine with a birdie and got two more to drop at Nos. 11 and 16.

"I had some putts that I could have made or made better efforts at and made a couple of nice putts, but it wasn't bad," Stricker said. "It wasn't great, it wasn't bad."

Waldorf began his day on the back nine and birdied three of his first six holes before a bogey at No. 18. After a birdie at the second hole and another bogey at the fourth, he pulled out consecutive birdies at Nos. 6 and 7.

"I think it helped a little bit that (the course) was soft, but still, when you're standing there 210 yards away, these greens are pretty small, they're not very inviting and I was just able to really control the shot the way I wanted to and get the trajectory right and get a lot of, you know, somewhat makeable birdie putts," Waldorf said. "So 15-, 20-footers actually are pretty good out here a lot of the time."

Waldorf, 61, is in the hunt for his first senior major title and his first win of any kind on the PGA Tour Champions since 2016.

"My game's been on an upswing," he said. "I played well in Madison, I played well in Houston, made the U.S. (Senior) Open, so I felt good about how I was playing. It was just a matter of kind of getting that one part of my game going, which was the iron game."

Perry opened with three straight birdies at Nos. 10-12 and sank a fourth at No. 14. He briefly touched 5 under for his day with birdies at Nos 5 and 6 but bogeyed the next two holes to drop down.

"What a way to start this event," Perry said. "When I birdied the first three, I thought, ‘Well, man, this might be a special day.' It was a good day. I kind of let a few get away there coming down the home stretch, but all in all, if you can shoot 3 under around this joint you've got to be happy."

--Field Level Media