NEWTOWN, Pennsylvania — Americans Maverick McNealy and Alex Smalley shared the lead after Friday’s (Saturday in Manila) chaotic second round of the PGA Championship as cold, windy conditions contributed to carnage at Aronimink.
Six others were only one adrift after 36 holes with seven more, including top-ranked defending champion Scottie Scheffler, just two strokes off the lead entering the weekend.
McNealy, never in the top 25 after 36 holes in 14 prior major starts, fired a three-under par 67 to match Smalley on four-under 136 at the midway mark.
“This is unfamiliar territory to me,” McNealy said. “I was surprised to be that high on the leaderboard.”
McNealy, a back-nine starter whose best major finish was 18th at last month’s Masters, holed out a 54-foot bunker shot for eagle at the par-five 16th, then made birdie putts from 12 and 18 feet on the first two holes.
The world No. 33 squandered the solo lead, however, with three-putt bogeys at the sixth and par-three eighth holes.
“My putter is going to have to be my best club,” McNealy said. “That’s the reason I still have a job out here.”
Smalley fell out of the solo lead with three bogeys in a row but a closing birdie put him on 69.
“It was difficult, it was chilly this morning, the wind was up,” Smalley said. “Some of the hole locations are very difficult. They’re right on the top of a crown.”
Sharing third on 137 were Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama, the 2021 Masters champion, plus Americans Chris Gotterup and Max Greyserman, South African Aldrich Potgieter, Australian Min Woo Lee and German Stephan Jaeger, who made 18 pars.
A bogey-bogey finish doomed 21-year-old Potgieter’s bid to become the youngest 36-hole major leader since Tiger Woods at the 1997 Masters.
“Looking at those last two holes as kind of unfortunate, but I felt like I was in control most of the round,” Potgieter said.
Gotterup closed with three birdies to shoot 65.
Joining Scheffler in ninth on 138 were fellow Americans Cameron Young, Justin Thomas and Harris English plus Spain’s David Puig, Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg and South Korean Kim Si-woo.
Scheffler tumbled from a share of the lead with three bogeys in his first four holes but closed with a birdie at nine to shoot 71.
The four-time major winner missed seven fairways after hitting 13 of 14 on Thursday but complained most about hole positions.
Six-time major winner Rory McIlroy, the reigning Masters champion, fired a bogey-free three-under par 67 to stand on 141 with Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka and Xander Schauffele among others.
“Some of these hole locations have been brutal,” McIlroy said. “It’s a really bunched leaderboard because guys are finding it tough to make putts.”
McIlroy spent hours on the driving range after a 74 on Thursday and seemed to solve his woes.
“I just needed to try and find the feeling with the driver. I felt like I found a feel last night and I definitely drove it much better today,” McIlroy said. AFP
NEWTOWN — Top-ranked defending champion Scottie Scheffler called PGA Championship pin placements the hardest he has seen on tour, describing those in Friday’s (Saturday in Manila) second round at Aronimink as “kind of absurd.”
The difficult hole positions on a course known for its sloping greens, together with gusting winds, played havoc with the world’s top players over the first two days, no one able to pull away from the pack.
“This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on tour, and that includes US Opens, that includes Oakmont,” Scheffler said, citing an event and course known for difficult set-ups.
Scheffler asked Mark Fulcher, the veteran caddie for playing partner Justin Rose of England, “Have you seen anything like this before?”
“They said maybe Shinnecock is the only place they have seen that has pins that could compare to this,” Scheffler said, citing the US Open host course where he will try to complete a career Grand Slam next month.
“It’s different in a sense on this golf course because Oakmont, their greens are extremely severe, but they’re extremely severe in one direction.
“Here, it’s like the green may slope all this way and then we put the pin down here and then there’s also a slope this way.
“It’s not as natural to the slopes that are there. There’s a bit more that’s manufactured into the greens, and it’s just very difficult.
“It’s difficult to get the ball close to the hole. It’s difficult to hole putts, especially when you have big slopes and wind, and I think that’s why you see the scores so close to par.” AFP
LOS ANGELES — Former world No. 1 Ko Jin-young channeled her younger, fearless self to fire a four-under-par 66 on Friday and seize a share of the halfway lead in the LPGA Queen City Championship in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Ko, who counts two major titles among her 15 LPGA wins, conjured four birdies without a bogey to build a seven-under-par total of 133 at Maketewah Country Club.
She was tied with American Amanda Doherty, who capped her four-under round with her fifth birdie of the day at the par-three 18th.
Rising English star Lottie Woad fired seven birdies in an impressive six-under 64 for sole possession of third place on six-under 134, with New Zealand star Lydia Ko was alone in fourth after a 67 for five-under 135.
World number one Nelly Korda and second-ranked Jeeno Thitikul headlined a group on four-under.
South Korea’s Ko, who has spent a record total of 163 weeks atop the rankings but is now ranked 51st, is in search of her first LPGA win since 2023.
She said the key to her round was “just trying to not be afraid to make bogey.
“I just want to be brave,” she said, recalling that when she first arrived on the LPGA tour in 2018 “I wasn’t scared before I hit the shot. But getting older, (I’m) like a little more afraid and think too much about it.”
Ko, who got married two months ago, said her husband asked her last week why she seemed so nervous before her shots. She said it was something that had crept into her game without her realizing it.
“I think I was scared to play because I want to be better and better,” she said. “I would say I’m a perfection person. That’s why I don’t want to make mistakes on the course.
“But after I heard that, (I realized) I’m a human, so I can make mistakes on the course.”
