Ian Poulter has the chance to join an exclusive club at this week's WGC-FedEx St Jude Invitational but he insists he is just focusing on his golf at TPC Southwind.
The Englishman won the WGC-Match Play in 2010 and WGC-HSBC Champions in 2012 and a victory on Sunday would make him just the sixth player to win three or more World Golf Championships.
An opening 64 in Memphis put him in a fine position to join Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy and Geoff Ogilvy in that club, but Poulter was refusing to get carried away.
"I don't see it as any different to any normal tournament I'm going to play in the whole season," he said. "The only thing I'm focused on is playing as well as I possibly can.
"I'm not high enough up in the FedExCup, I need to obviously move up in that. I've got two opportunities this week and the first FedEx event, so I need to move forward.
.@IanJamesPoulter off to a strong start ✍️@Workday | #WGCFedex
— The European Tour (@EuropeanTour) August 5, 2021
"Not only that, I need to pick up some points for the Ryder Cup team. So I don't look at this as a WGC, I don't look at that in any way, shape or form.
"It's a good tournament, a course I like, so hopefully I can just continue on that."
Starting on the tenth, he put his tee shot to just inside ten feet for a birdie on the par three 11th and got up and down from the sand to make the most of the par five 16th.
He started his second nine in fine style with an approach to seven feet at the first and after making a two putt birdie at the par five third, he holed a 35 footer at the fourth to get to five under.
He looked in trouble at the eighth but chipped in for a third two of the day and got up and down from a bunker at the ninth to save par and complete a bogey free effort.
"Just steady golf, to be honest with you," he said. "I'm coming off two weeks off and you never know when you've been at home for two weeks whether you've done enough practice.
"Practice at my home course was great fun, great to see family and friends.
"Today was one of those days where I tried to feel myself in the tournament, feel my way in and obviously I think I did that really nicely. No bogeys, clean card. Had plenty of chances, a couple of outside looks which kind of sniffed the hole, so all in all it's a great start."
