Kuchar captures lead at halfway mark
McIlroy, 2 others trail by 2 shots at Riviera
LOS ANGELES — Matt Kuchar made a mess of the easiest hole at Riviera. He couldn’t find the fairway and felt he was on the defensive all afternoon Friday in the Genesis Invitational. On the other hand, he was good enough with the short irons to manage a 2-under 69 and build a two-shot lead over Rory McIlroy and two others going into the weekend.
“It definitely wasn’t my best stuff today,” Kuchar said.
Tiger Woods happily would have taken a score like that. Instead, he made his bid for a first victory at Riviera and a record 83rd title on the PGA Tour a lot tougher. Two swings with a wedge wound up costing Woods three shots, and his 73 left him nine shots behind.
“I made some pretty bad mistakes out there,” Woods said.
He can’t afford any more, not with 44 players ahead of him, including past champions like Adam Scott and Dustin Johnson.
McIlroy, in his return to No. 1 in the world, handled the par 5s and kept mistakes to a minimum in his round of 67, which puts him in the final group Saturday with Kuchar and Harold Varner III, who had a 68 in the morning.
Kuchar was at 9-under 135. He began with a bogey on the par-5 opening hole, one of only two players in the 121-man field to not make par or better. Kuchar went long off the green, took two chips to get on the green and missed a 15-foot par putt.
Wyndham Clark had a 68 and joined McIlroy and Varner in the group two shots behind.
“I’m managing my game well,” McIlroy said. “I’ve hit a couple loose shots here and there, but I’m thinking my way around the golf course, and that’s what this place is all about. You can hit a few squirrelly shots and get away with it as long as you miss it in the right places, and, for the first couple days, I’ve done that.”
Scott has a trophy from Riviera, just not an official victory. He won in 2005 when there was so much rain the tournament was reduced to 36 holes, and he won in a playoff Monday.This week, he returned from a two-month break with a 7under 64 that left him three shots behind.
Scott hasn’t played since he won the Australian PGA Championship three days before Christmas.
Woods didn’t have to search long to figure out his errors. He started well enough with a smart choice to hit iron on the reachable par-4 10th because of the back right pin position, a wedge into about 12 feet and a birdie. And he was never in too much trouble. The 15th hole did not appear to present any problems, especially after Woods crushed a 335-yard drive to the middle of the fairway.
He hung his head immediately after a chunked pitching wedge that plugged into the bunker short of the green, leaving no shot to a front pin. He blasted that through the green, chipped back to 7 feet and missed putt for double bogey.