Lee boosts PGA Tour survival hopes
Danny Lee’s hopes of retaining his PGA Tour card have improved after a strong day at the Canadian Open yesterday.
After the opening day’s play was disrupted by weather, Lee completed 21 holes yesterday to vault up the leaderboard and put himself in with a chance of claiming a vital result for his golfing future.
Lee’s performance was as inconsistent as the earlier weather. He started sedately, finishing his opening round with two birdies on his final three holes to card a four-under 68, but that calm beginning soon disappeared at the start of his second round.
For nine holes, Lee did not record a par, firing four bogies and two birdies on his first six holes before reeling off three straight birdies to have righted the ship by the turn.
Things finished far more calmly, with two further birdies and seven pars seeing Lee sign for a three-under 69 to move to seven-under for the tournament.
It’s a score good enough to move the 28-year-old into a share of 23rd but more importantly gives Lee a chance to improve his ranking in the FedEx Cup, where he sits in 124th place.
The top 125 automatically retain their PGA Tour cards for next season and Lee is likely to qualify for only two of the remaining four events this season before the cut is made to find the top 125.
Currently, Lee is projected to move into 121st but his position is volatile.
A bad final two rounds could see him slide out of the top 125, while a top 10 finish would go a long way to securing his card for next season.
Lee is two shots behind the top 10 and six off leader Kevin Tway, who carded rounds of 66 and 65 to lead by one stroke from Whee Kim and Keegan Bradley.
Elsewhere, Lydia Ko has missed the cut at the Scottish Open, with rounds of 73 and 72 seeing the former world No 1 finish at three-over, two strokes outside the cut line.
It is just the sixth missed cut in Ko’s six-year career on the LPGA Tour, and is a far from ideal buildup for next week’s British Open, where Ko has finished in the top 15 only once in six appearances.