On one side of the golf course, Jordan Spieth was piling up enough birdies to momentarily tie for the lead at Whistling Straits.
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Familiarity of the final major of the year came from Dustin Johnson. “It’s only the first round”.
If Johnson continues to play well at the US PGA Championship, it would be considered a long road back, by most accounts, for the 31-year-old, who has battled injuries in recent years and even a short time away from the tour in 2014 for personal reasons.
Geoff Ogilvy is four over after eight holes of round two while Steven Bowditch is finished at five over.
Round 1 was a draw. He ended up with a double bogey on the 18th hole after his approach shot landed in the left rough.
Spieth, looking for his third major victory of the year, put together a 5-under round of 67 in the morning to move to 6-under for the week.
Rose admitted it was going to be “a bit of a drag” to face a 5am alarm call for the scheduled 7am restart on Saturday, but joked: “I opened my big mouth to the boys I was playing with and said the end was in sight. Because it’s just going to get more challenging with the pin locations and firmness of the greens”. But it was fine. So that was a nice kind of two-shot swing in one shot. “And I was very fortunate to escape with a par there”. “Hopefully I can hit the ball as well as I did today tomorrow and make some putts”, he said. “I was controlling it”.
Only Spieth’s fellow Texan Ben Hogan (1953) and Tiger Woods (2000) have won three Majors in one calendar year.
And then he started to press, and it almost cost him.
Daly made a 10 on the hole. At the last minute, he switched up to a 9-iron and watched it release to 5 feet for another birdie.
The Swede got as low as eight-under, and his 36-hole total of seven-under 137 gave him the outright lead when he walked off the course.
The chip came out hot, and Spieth figured it would have gone some 12 feet by the hole. “Nothing else”.
“We got work to do”, he said after his 67.
But the 22-year-old added: “I feel good“. The wind was easier than yesterday so there are some scores out there to be had. Of the 14 players who broke 70, Lingmerth and Scott Piercy (68) were the only ones who faced the tougher afternoon conditions.
McIlroy insisted he will still be in the hunt to retain his USPGA title if he re-finds his best form over the weekend at Whistling Straits.
“That was a roller coaster”, Lingmerth said on TNT. Woods managed only two birdies, both on the par 5s, in the calmer conditions and never looked good with the putter in opening with a 75.
He already has six straight rounds over par in the majors, which he has only done once before.
The Masters. The U.S. Open. He had the 36-hole lead at St. Andrews until he disappeared on the weekend.
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McIlroy said: “I don’t think there was much difference ball-striking wise”. So when he hits a bad shot he will say something and then he moves on.
