NORTON, Mass. -- Jim Furyk has won a major championship, ranks among the world's top-10 players and already owns two victories this season.
And yet, on the eve of the Deutsche Bank Championship's opening round, he was more nervous than a groom with cold feet.
Can't blame him, really. One week ago, Furyk made national headlines when he was disqualified from the Barclays for failing to make his pro-am tee time after his phone battery went dead and the alarm didn't register. Sitting in his hotel room on Thursday night, he felt an eerie sense of déjà vu.
"Right about kickoff time of the football games, the power went out in my hotel for an hour," he recounted. "I'm staring at my phone wondering how much battery it's got. And it was out for about an hour. [My wife] calls and I'm thinking, 'Do I talk to her or should I try to save some battery?' I couldn't get a wake-up call because the phones weren't working, so before I went to sleep, I opened the drapes just in case it didn't come back on. At least I'd see the sunlight."
Rest assured -- well, not too much rest -- Furyk has learned his lesson. With the power in his hotel returned, he awoke at promptly 5:15 a.m. ET on Friday morning, thanks not only to the alarm on his phone, but also to a hotel wake-up call and one from another party with a vested interest.
"My wife [Tabitha] called me, just to tease me a bit," he said. "She asked me last night if I wanted her to call and I said yes. So she got up well ahead of when she usually would have, then called me and went back to sleep."
If waking up is the greatest of Furyk's worries, he'll be just fine. Following his three-alarm morning, he arrived at TPC Boston in plenty of time, then fired a 5-under 66 to ascend the first-round leaderboard.
Calling it "one of my better ball-striking rounds of the year," Furyk didn't miss a single fairway and found 17 of 18 greens in regulation, resulting in six birdies and just a lone bogey.
"I had a lot of opportunities," said Furyk, who dropped from third to eighth in the FedEx Cup rankings after missing last week's event. "I took advantage of some and definitely left some out there. Was a little confused with my putting at times, but I made some good putts, as well."
Saying he was "very surprised" at the traction of his oversleeping story throughout the mainstream media, Furyk said he has now put that in the past and is looking to move onward.
Friday's solid opening round was certainly a step in the right direction. And there's more good news, too: With an afternoon tee time on Saturday, he finally gets to sleep in.
If he keeps playing like this, Furyk may be teeing it up late in the final two rounds, as well.
Jason Sobel is a golf writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Jason.Sobel@espn.com.
