With the second round yet to be completed, Kevin Kisner and Hideki Matsuyama share the lead in the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — He was the basketball player who wasn’t tall enough, the football player who got crushed. So Kevin Kisner, a feisty sort who enjoyed the camaraderie and competition of team sports, took the advice of a high school coach who told him, “I think you ought to stick to golf.”
For a while, lacking confidence in his ball-striking — the very essence of the game — it seemed he was stuck with golf. “I was like, ‘I got no chance the way I’m hitting it,” said Kisner of his early days as a pro in the minor leagues, the Web.Com Tour.
He’s got a chance now, a chance to win a major, the PGA Championship, a great chance. With a bit of arrogance and a great deal of determination, and the help of a teaching pro named John Tillery, Kisner rebuilt his swing. “It was so bad,” Kisner said, “I was shanking in the middle of the fairway.”
Now it’s good that along with that, along with a short game
and putting skill Kisner always possessed, he’s tied for the lead with red hot Hideki Matsuyama in the PGA, which Friday despite a 1-hour, 43-minute weather suspension almost made it through the second round.
Kisner, done early, long before play was halted at 4:43 p.m. EDT, shot a second consecutive 4-under 67 at Quail Hollow. Matsuyama, winner of last weekend’s Bridgestone, roared in late with a 64. Both are at 8-under 134.
Third at 6-under 136 after a 66 is Jason Day, the 2015 PGA winner and 2016 runner-up, while Francisco Molinari, Louis Oosthuizen and Chris Stroud are at 5-under 137. Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas and Paul Casey are at 139.
The names, the guys around whom the pretournament stories were constructed, Jordan Spieth, trying to win a career Grand Slam? Brooks Koepka, after stomping the field in the U.S.Open? Sergio Garcia, visiting the world in his Masters champion green jacket? Well ...
Spieth had a 73 after a Thursday 72 and is 3-over145, 11 behind. He’s got going to Slam it this week. Koepka also shot 73 and is at 1-under 141. Sergio had a 75, and his 8-over 150 won’t even keep him around for the final two rounds.
This 99th PGA Championship is not going to be theirs.
The way he’s played this summer, second in the U.S. Open to Koepka; 14th in the British and a few days ago closing with a 61 to take the Bridgestone, it very well could be Matsuyama’s.
Then again, Quail is sort of a home course for Kisner. Even though he lives in Aiken, S.C., some two hours away, Kisner frequently comes to the club of which a brotherin-law was a founding member.
He stopped by a month ago to check out the renovations. Then again, local knowledge may be of no use the way Matsuyama has performed.
“I am playing well,” agreed Matsuyama. He’s won three times since last October. “But whether it’s the best I’ve played in my career, I’m not sure.”
That’s irrelevant. He just has to be playing the best this weekend to win a major for the first time.
“I’m not sure,” he said when asked what it would mean. “That’s a difficult question, hard to think about. I try to imagine, but we have a lot of golf left.”
Kisner, 33, has been thinking about a major since he turned pro.
“I’m just excited about the opportunity,” he said. “I’ve been upset with how I’ve played the majors in my career. I feel like I have the game to compete in the majors and tons of 30th, 40th and 50th-place finishes. I feel real comfortable here, and I know the course.’’