Dustin Johnson keeps right on rolling at East Lake

Hideki Matsuyama of Japan ran off three straight birdies early in his round and finished with a birdie on the par-5 18th – the nines have been switched at East Lake – for a 66, while Kevin Chappell joined them with a bogey-free round.

Rory McIlroy’s roller-coaster opening round at the Tour Championship on Thursday was not ideal for stroke play but just about flawless for the match play format of next week’s Ryder Cup.

The tournament victor has also claimed the FedExCup in each of the past six years, and all 30 players in this week’s field have a mathematical chance of walking off with the $10 million jackpot, though only the top five seeds are not reliant on the results of others.

Johnson, the FedEx Cup leader, made birdies on holes five and six before a mixed back nine, which included two bogeys. The top five were all among the dozen players who broke par in the opening round.

Russell Knox matched the low score of the tournament with a 66 that allowed him to get back under par at 1-under 139, along with Justin Thomas, who is still hopeful of a Ryder Cup pick at the end of the week. Chappell is now the top-ranked American not in the team, closely followed by Kevin Kisner (-3) and Justin Thomas (-2). However they can still win the bonus pool if they finish close to victory in certain circumstances; for instance, Scott can finish tied-fourth in Atlanta and still win the $10 million if his main rivals struggle, and Day can finish tied-third and win the money.

“If I kept my card, that was my No. 1 goal”, Vegas said.

McIlroy, the only member of the European Ryder Cup team in the elite 30-man field, goes out this evening (6.25pm UK) alongside fellow Brit Paul Casey, two shots off the lead and hoping to cut out the errors that turned a potential 63 into a 68.

The top 70 after next week advance to the third playoff event, with the top 30 going to East Lake for the Tour Championship.

“I need to win, and I just need someone to play as good as Dustin this week”, McIlroy said.

“I look at what Rory did at Deutsche Bank, ” Spieth said about his turnaround. “But I put in a lot of work to get to where I am”.

For McIlroy, there have been two worldwide wins, the latest a few weeks ago in the playoffs, his first on the PGA Tour in more than a year.

“There’s four or five US guys this week still hoping to play well to make the Ryder Cup”, Knox said. Every week, I feel like I bring the same game, which is nice.

“I feel like I’m playing better golf, I feel like my game is better than it has been in years past”, he added. “Now I obviously want to win a major, and I want to win again to kind of validate the first one”.

But the calamitous finish – set up by two missed fairways off the tee – led to the pair of bogeys, Scott also unable to capitalise on East Lake’s gettable closing hole.