Charlotte (AFP) – Australia’s second-place Cam Davis made an early start hoping to erase his two-stroke deficit to leader Jhonattan Vegas as Friday’s second round of the PGA Championship began at Quail Hollow. Vegas birdied five of his last six holes to fire a seven-under par 64, his lowest round in a major, and grab the edge over Davis and American Ryan Gerard on 66.
“I didn’t really see that score coming, but I think I got lucky that I was able to tee off very late and the course is drying very quick,” Vegas said. “I was able to take advantage a little bit of those conditions, but a solid round from beginning to end. Good way to start.”
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Davis began Friday in the second morning group off the first tee, finding a fairway bunker, but dropped his approach 29 feet from the hole and two-putted for par. “Five-under is a pretty low score in a major actually, so pretty happy with it,” Davis said Thursday. “Very happy with my work, but it’s still a four-round event.”
Vegas was set for a 9:01 a.m. (1301 GMT) start off the first tee while Gerard awaited an afternoon start in the penultimate group off the 10th tee. A fourth-place pack on 67 included England’s Luke Donald and Aaron Rai, New Zealand’s Ryan Fox, Germany’s Stephan Jaeger, and American Alex Smalley, the final alternate who made the field on the eve of play.
The feature group of the world’s three top-ranked players struggled in round one, with world number one Scottie Scheffler on 69, defending champion and third-ranked Xander Schauffele on 72, and Masters winner Rory McIlroy on 74. All three made double bogeys at the par-four 16th on Thursday, with Schauffele and Scheffler blaming mud on their balls for fairway shots soaring into water, unhappy the PGA of America chose not to allow preferred lies so mud could be cleaned from fairway balls after days of rain.
“It’s frustrating,” Scheffler said. “You spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball, and due to a rules decision all of a sudden you have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes. But I don’t make the rules. I just have to deal with the consequences of those rules.”
– ‘It’s kind of stupid’ – Schauffele agreed, adding: “It’s just unfortunate to be hitting good shots and to pay them off that way. It’s kind of stupid. The mud balls are going to get worse as the plays dries up. They’re going to get in that perfect cake zone.”
Not everyone, however, was so critical of the move, typical for a major tournament. “The PGA Tour and PGA of America referees know what they’re doing,” Rai said. “They know a lot more than us as players. That decision would have been based on the right reasons. There were a couple of spots that were pretty wet on the fairways, but that’s to be expected with just how much rain that we’ve had. Without playing preferred lies, it brought in the challenge of the short game a little bit more.”
New Zealand’s Ryan Fox said he never expected anything else from organizers. “I was expecting it not to be,” Fox said. “I think probably all of us would have liked it to be, but it is a major championship.”
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