South Korean K.J. Choi, who is playing his first major of 2016, was three shots behind Walker, while Sweden’s Henrik Stenson, fresh off winning the British Open in a thrilling final-round duel with American great Phil Mickelson, is two shots back.
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The start should have been even better!
Tournament officials said the players would remain in place on the course while the excess water was cleared, with clearer conditions expected shortly.
“I feel like all year it’s just been real stale and stagnant”, Walker said.
Streb badly missed a 15-foot birdie putt on the eighth hole, and he was determined to at least give himself a chance on the ninth.
Dustin Johnson, the U.S. Open champion who played in the group with Stenson and Masters victor Danny Willett, shot a 72 for a two-round total of 149 and was sure to miss the 36-hole cut.
“I started not the way I wanted but I knew I didn’t need to worry too much”.
The second round began ominously when pouring rain led to a 41-minute suspension of play a little more than an hour after the first tee shots of the day.
“I’m going to go home and play with the kids and get them to bed”. “I’ve been playing well and I got a lot of good work in last week”, said Fowler in his post round press appearance. “Tee to green was good, but it was just pathetic when I got onto the green”. Mixed in with those three birdies was an ugly bogey that won’t show up as a three-putt in the stats but was just that. Afternoon starter Hideki Matsuyama quickly joined his compatriot on three-under with a stunning eagle-two at the par-four second hole where he spun his approach shot into the cup. “I think so”, he said, “just to get more faces involved, to have kids aware that there’s more than just – and I hate to give a cliché – baseball, basketball and football”. Mickelson bounced back and finished the round at even par, and 1 over for the first two rounds of the PGA Championship.
Anirban Lahiri had a rough start to the PGA Championships as he struggled in the first round.
Looming large two strokes behind are defending champion Day, and 23-year-old Emiliano Grillo of Argentina, with Stenson three back at rain-softened Baltusrol. He drove the ball with precision, flagged his iron shots and rolled his putts as if they were being laser guided.
Among players squeezing in on the number were former US Open victor Justin Rose of England (70-72), former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel (73-69) and his fellow South African, four-times major victor Ernie Els (73-69). “I guess obviously people are talking to you thinking it should be a problem, but it was no problem”. That’s also five in a row for Stenson, dating to the first round of the Open Championship (68-65-68-63 in the Open Championship; and today’s 67 in the PGA Championship).
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“The wetter the ground, the less the roll and the easier it is to pick and keep to a targeted landing zone”, according to Bradley Klein, architecture editor of Golfweek Magazine and author of numerous books on golf course design.
