A Round to Forget in the Memorial : Golf: U.S. Amateur titlist Voges of Simi Valley opens with an 87 and falls 22 shots off the pace.

Mitch Voges, the reigning U.S. Amateur champion, came to the Memorial tournament to get a look at Muirfield Village Golf Club, site of the Amateur in August.

Suffice it to say, he didn’t have a good time.

“I’d say that’s the worst experience I’ve ever had in the game of golf,” Voges said after posting an 87, the highest score of Thursday’s first round by eight shots.

Voges, 42, of Simi Valley, stumbled to six bogeys and two double bogeys for an 8-over-par 44 on the front side. He started the back side by nearly holing his approach at the 10th hole, then tapping in for a birdie. But he had a triple bogey at the 12th, a double bogey at the 15th and added three more bogeys.

“Humiliation’s probably a pretty good word,” he said in summing up his day.

The 87 left Voges 22 shots behind first-round leader Nolan Henke.

Voges became the third-oldest national amateur champion last year when he won at the Honors Course in Ooltewah, Tenn. Muirfield Village will play host to the 92nd U. S. Amateur championship from Aug. 25-30.

“Obviously, the point was to get the opportunity to get some competitive rounds on a golf course that I plan to play later in the summer,” Voges said.

That plan was derailed when a light rain fell throughout the day and the temperature hovered in the high 60s.

“I’m not a particularly good player in cold weather, wind or rain,” he said. “But I never expected to have a day like this. I wouldn’t have thought this possible. The wheels almost never come off my game.”

As he walked into the scoring tent after the round, he even dropped his pencil.

“Somewhere along the line, your confidence goes right in the tank, and the way you feel about things goes pretty bad,” he said. “But I kept trying. I kept my mouth shut and I did try. It might not look like it, but I did try.”

So how does a player follow one of the highest scores in the 17 years of the Memorial?

“This is uncharted ground. I wish I could say ‘Yeah, usually when I fire an 87 in the first round of a major tournament, this is what I do.’ But I don’t have an answer for that,” he said.

Voges wasn’t looking at the light side of his troubles.

“There’s nothing real humorous about it,” he said.

Then he added: “I mean, what the heck, you start the Indianapolis 500 spending a couple million dollars on a race car and sometimes it doesn’t start and sometimes you don’t complete a lap.

“Today my car didn’t run very good.”