Former champions Grant Greazel and Cole Davis have turned the 37th annual Times-Republican City Golf Tournament into a match play event after Saturday’s opening round at Elmwood Country Club. Greazel shot tournament-record 7-under-par 63 to carry a one-stroke lead on Davis into Sunday’s final 18 holes at the American Legion Memorial Golf Course, where nobody else will be within seven strokes of the duo.

JD Pollard and Eli Polley share third place after opening rounds of 2-over 72, rounding out the final pairing for Sunday’s play at the Legion.

Davis identified the probability that his 2022 championship score of 130 — the tournament record — is in jeopardy.

“I think my record’s probably in play since Greazel shot a 7 (under) here and 4 (under) is very doable over there,” he said. “But you’ve still gotta go golf your ball, so who knows.”

Greazel’s leading round of 63 bested the Elmwood mark of 64 shared by Tate Carlson from 2023 and Jay Giannetto in 2002, and he did it despite starting Saturday’s round with a bogey.

“You can’t win it on the first day but you can really lose it, so you’ve just got to give yourself a chance going into Sunday,” Greazel said. “I bogeyed the first and after that it was pretty much perfect golf from there on out.”

Greazel was only 1-under at the turn before both he and Davis shot 6-under 29 on the back nine.

“Just kinda caught fire,” Greazel said with a smile. He carded six birdies and no bogeys on the back, while Davis’s scorecard had a bit more adventure. He eagled the par-5 13th but bogeyed the 15th after missing the green with his approach shot.

“I’ve (shot 29) a few times on the back,” Davis said. “Playing the white tees helps a little bit. It makes some of the holes driveable, but you’ve still gotta golf your ball. Six under is good no matter what.”

Greazel said his 29 was his first such score on any nine holes in competitive play.

“It was a good nine to do it on,” he said. “You just come in to have fun and try to match whatever Cole and JD and a couple other guys are going to shoot.

“Playing with Cole, he’d hit a good shot and I’d be like ‘OK, I’ve got to match him,’ or if I made a putt, he’d roll in another one, so it was just a lot of good golf being played out there today.”

Davis passed up on playing in the Iowa Open at Blue Top Ridge in Riverside to instead compete for the City Golf title. He became the youngest tournament champion at 16 years old in 2018, and he claimed his second City title in 2022.

Greazel, who was the National Junior College Athletic Association Division II champion for Kirkwood Community College in May, won last year’s crown in a sudden-death playoff, holding off two-time champion Tate Carlson in the rain.

Sunday’s final round will be just another day on the links for these two former Bobcats.

“We do this every day,” Davis said. “It’s always competitive, but it’s just another day. Just the added pressure of some people watching and kind of the expectation that one of us (collegiate golfers) should win.

“I think if you’ve done it before, people expect you to do it again. Being a college golfer, the expectation’s really high, so it feels good to go out there and actually shoot a score.”

Davis has one season left at Creighton University, while Greazel is headed to Arizona in the fall. Pollard, who has finished as high as third in the City Open, will be a senior golfer at Northern Iowa.

“It should be a good day, another good group, and hopefully a lot of birdies out there and we can shoot around the score we shot today,” Greazel said.

FIVE WOMEN IN THE MIX

The women’s tournament has just five entrants this year, but one of them is a former three-time champion.

Terri Craft is fourth out of five women’s golfers after Saturday’s opening round, but all five women are within nine strokes of each other. Craft won three-straight City titles from 2001-2003.

Leiah Paustian has a four-shot lead on the field after her opening 88, which included a 39 on the back nine.

Leah Stahlin and Riley Myers share second place at 92, Craft shot a 96, and Margaret Fehrle shot a 97.

TOURNAMENT WEBSITE: https://www.golfgenius.com/pages/10818899183679880430?preview=true