HOUSTON — Brandt Snedek­er found a lot of fair­ways and greens at dif­fi­cult Memo­r­i­al Park, top-ranked Dustin John­son returned from the coro­n­avirus, and fans were back, too, Thurs­day at the Hous­ton Open.

Snedek­er shot a 5‑under 65 in the after­noon to take a two-stroke lead in the last event before the Mas­ters. He’s one of 37 play­ers in the field this week set to play at Augus­ta National.

“Drove it great,” Snedek­er said. “Around this golf course you have to be in the fair­way, oth­er­wise it’s going to be a long day for you. Did a great job of that. Made some putts. And the par 5s, birdied every par 5 out there. This course is a long, tough golf course, so to play well you need to take advan­tage of the scor­ing holes, which I did a great job of today.”

The tour­na­ment — at pub­lic Memo­r­i­al Park for the first time since 1963 — is lim­it­ing tick­et sales to 2,000 a day. It’s the first domes­tic PGA Tour event to have fans since The Play­ers Cham­pi­onship on March 12.

“I think that’s a big rea­son why I played well today,” Snedek­er said. “I love hav­ing fans out here. I kind of feed off their ener­gy. It’s great to hear some claps and peo­ple excit­ed for good shots and some birdies.”

John­son had a 72 — bogey­ing five of the last sev­en holes on his front nine — in his return after a pos­i­tive coro­n­avirus test knocked him out of the CJ Cup at Shad­ow Creek and the Zozo Cham­pi­onship at Sherwood.

The 39-year-old Snedek­er won the last of his nine PGA Tour titles in 2018. He fol­lowed a birdie on the par‑4 13th with a bogey on the par‑4 14th after dri­ving into the right rough, then birdied the par‑3 15th and par‑5 16th.

“I’ve been dri­ving it well, so it just kind of depend­ed how I hit my irons and kind of hung in there,” Snedek­er said. “Did a great job of kind of think­ing my way around the golf course.”

Jason Day was tied for sec­ond with Scot­tie Schef­fler, Harold Varn­er III, Car­los Ortiz, Michael Thomp­son and Cameron Davis.

“The golf course kind of forces you into being patient just because you can’t real­ly miss too many greens,” Schef­fler said. “Around the greens out here is very, very dif­fi­cult to get up-and-down and you can get into some spots where you start play­ing ping pong across these greens.”

Brooks Koep­ka also had a 72. He’s play­ing for the sec­ond time since a two-month lay­off to heal injuries. Play­er part­ner Lan­to Grif­fin, the win­ner last year at Golf Club of Hous­ton, also shot 72. Jor­dan Spi­eth round­ed out the morn­ing three­some with a 72.

“It cer­tain­ly felt more nor­mal as we were play­ing today and espe­cial­ly as we were fin­ish­ing up,” Spi­eth said about the fans. “Just the look of it is way more nor­mal than when it was just so bare.”

Koep­ka served as a con­sul­tant on course archi­tect Tom Doak’s renovation.

“I think every time Jor­dan hit it in the water, he told me that was my fault,” Koep­ka said.

Phil Mick­el­son shot 76. He had two dou­ble bogeys and two bogeys.