Tony Romo gives himself shot at playing the weekend at Safeway Open

Tony Romo outplayed some of golf’s best players on Thursday and shot two-under in the first round of the Safeway Open.

Retired NFL quarterback and psychic color commentator Tony Romo may have to change his plans for this weekend.

Romo took a break from his regular job of calling out plays NFL teams are going to run on Sundays to partake in his hobby, golf, on Thursday. But this is more than a hobby for Romo: he’s competing on the game’s biggest stage, the PGA Tour, and, on Thursday at least, beating some of the best players in the world.

Romo shot a two-under round of 70 on Thursday in the opening day of the Safeway Open at Silverado Country Club in California’s Napa Valley. He’s currently tied for 22nd, with a realistic chance of making the cut in a PGA Tour event for the first time.

The former Cowboys quarterback got off to a great start, completing a Hail Mary with a 50-foot putt on his first hole, the 10th, to quickly go one-under. He dropped a shot at the 14th but got up-and-down from a greenside bunker at the par-5 18th to shoot 35 on his front-nine.

At the fourth hole, Romo made a second straight bogey after driving it into the left-hand trees and having to chip out. He fell to one-over, but just when his round seemed like it was starting to unravel, he got the shot back with a birdie at the par-5 fifth. Then, at the eighth hole, he holed a 20-footer for birdie. Romo ended his round not by throwing a costly interception but by two-putting from 70 feet at the ninth to finish at two-under.

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Playing under a sponsor’s exemption, Romo wasn’t expected to be in contention this week. He was 1000/1 to win at the start of the week, his chances of even making the cut small. In three prior PGA Tour appearances, he had never even come close to making the weekend. He missed the cut by 10 shots in his last event, the AT&T Byron Nelson in May. At the tour’s stop in the Dominican Republic the last two years, he’s finished last and next-to-last in the field. His best round was a 74 at the Byron Nelson.

Romo, though, showed he has the game to keep pace with the best. He hit seven drives over 300 yards on Thursday. He was also a perfect 13 for 13 putting from inside 10 feet. Among the players who didn’t shoot two-under are former World No. 2 Hideki Matsuyama, Kevin Chappell, who shot 59 two weeks ago, last week’s winner Sebastian Munoz, and the defending champion of the Safeway Open, Kevin Tway. Romo beat his playing partners, Beau Hossler and Michael Gellerman — actual professional golfers — by four and seven shots, respectively.

It was a great round, but it also puts Romo and his bosses at CBS in a bind for Sunday. He’s scheduled to work the Vikings-Bears game in Chicago alongside broadcast partner Jim Nantz, but if he’s still around Napa Valley on the weekend, the network will need to make other arrangements. Boomer Esiason, an analyst on the CBS preview show, will step in to replace Romo in the booth.

But only if he needs to. It seemed like a long shot at the start of the week, but Romo’s hot start to the tournament has now made it a very real possibility.