Grant Lester, Erich Fortlage and Harvey Young of Australia all posted matching 66s to share the Day 1 lead.

Lester played at par-71 Bandon Trails, the stroke-play co-host, while Fortlage, who turns 16 on Thursday, and Young played par-72 Bandon Dunes, where match play will take place beginning on Wednesday.

“You don’t get fog. It plays pretty similar, hard and fast. The greens are a little bit softer and slower,” 18-year-old Harvey Young said when comparing his home club of Royal Melbourne to Bandon Dunes

It wasn’t just the leaders who provided the headlines. Jack Cantlay, the younger brother of reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year Patrick, broke the championship nine-hole scoring record with a 28 on Bandon Dunes’ front nine.

Heavy fog didn't slow down Jack Cantlay, brother of Patrick, on day one of the U.S. Junior. PHOTO: USGA.

Cantlay started on No.10, and his second nine included a pair of eagle threes on the two par-5s, a 45-foot putt on the 3rd hole and a 65-foot chip-in on No.9. Four-over-par through his first eight holes, Cantlay, an incoming freshman at Long Beach State, rallied to play his final 11 holes in nine-under to card a five-under 67.

The day began with bright sunshine and temperatures reaching the low 60s on the Oregon coast. The winds, which are so much a part of the story here, gusted as high as 20 miles per hour before they were replaced by late-afternoon fog that made visibility challenging for the final groups.

“On 13, the par-5, it started to get bad and then it got worse and worse,” said Young of the fog. “I said to [my caddie] Daniel [Kitayama], it was one of the most enjoyable rounds I’ve had just because I’ve never played in anything like this before.”

“If I woke up and said, ‘You’d shoot even,’ I’d go back to sleep. So having six better than that is pretty good.” - Harvey Young.

Lester, who like Cantlay is competing in his first USGA championship, picked an opportune time to have a career-best day.  Playing in the fifth group off No.10 at Bandon Trails, the rising high school senior went out in three-under 32, then added birdies on Nos.1, 3 and 6 against a lone bogey on the 115-yard, par-3 5th to come home in 34.

“I wasn’t as nervous as I expected,” said Lester. “My caddie did a really good job of keeping me calm the whole day. Obviously, it’s the U.S. Junior Amateur, but I can’t be thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’m playing in a national championship.’ I’ve just got to treat it like any other round of golf.

“I made every putt I looked at today. My ball-striking was good, but that is not what made me shoot five-under.”

Young, playing in the penultimate grouping off the first tee at Bandon Dunes, got off to a roaring start with birdies on his first three holes, making putts of 7, 10 and 2 feet. Another birdie on the par-5 9th gave him a front-nine 32. As the fog worsened, Young came home in 34 to complete just the second bogey-free round on Monday (the other was by Zhengqian Li, who shot 68 at Bandon Trails).

This is Young’s first trip to the United States to play golf. He arrived on May 31 and competed in the Dogwood Invitational, the International Junior Masters and the Porter Cup as well as a U.S. Junior Amateur qualifier on June 23 at Huntsville Golf Club where he posted a bogey-free 71 to garner one of the two available spots.

“If I woke up and said, ‘You’d shoot even,’ I’d go back to sleep,” said Young of surpassing his expectations. “So having six better than that is pretty good.”

Like Lester, Fortlage, who spends his summers in Florida playing on the Hurricane Junior Golf Tour, had a strong day on the greens, converting a 20-foot par putt on the 189-yard, par-3 12th hole. He also nearly holed a 110-yard wedge approach on the 351-yard 16th hole.

While Cantlay posted the lone 67 at Bandon Dunes, Dianchou Wu, who holed out for an eagle two from 70 yards out on No.8, and You Seong Choi shot the same number at Bandon Trails, a Ben Crenshaw/Bill Coore design that measured 6,723 yards.

Caden Pinckes, whose father, Mike, is the PGA Tour’s general manager of media, was among four players who shot 68 at Bandon Dunes, a David McLay Kidd design that measured 6,912 yards. The others were incoming Georgia Tech freshman Aidan Tran, who was the youngest competitor in the 2019 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Bandon Dunes, along with Kiwi Jayden Ford and Pongsapak Laopakdee.

Nicholas Gross, a 2018 Drive, Chip & Putt age-group finalist, joined Li and Caleb Surratt in posting 68s at Bandon Trails.