Spieth avoids another cut miss
Jordan Spieth normally doesn’t concern himself with the cut line in the middle of a round. Unless the Dallas native is in danger of staying home on consecutive weekends in what amount to his hometown events.
Spieth recovered from a bad start by going 5 under over his final 13 holes at the Colonial in Fort Worth on Friday, and his 2-under 68 put the defending champion at 2-under 138, four shots behind second-round leaders Webb Simpson, Kevin Kisner, Danny Lee and Scott Piercy.
“When your back’s against the wall and you feel the n e r v e s k i c k u p b e c au s e you’ve got to do something, and you’re not going to be able to play both weekends in town,” said Spieth, coming off missed cuts in The Players Championship and AT&T Byron Nelson. “That would have been really, really tough for me to swallow if I missed the cut. And it was in my head.”
Lee birdied the last hole for a 64, the low round of the tournament on a hot and windy day. Kisner also had a birdie on his final hole, the ninth, for a second straight 67. Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open champion, and Piercy each shot 66 to join the group at 6-under 134.
Masters champion Sergio Garcia (66) and fellow Spaniard Jon Rahm (69), who played in the same group, were at 5 under along with England’s Paul Casey (66) and Sean O’Hair (68).
Phil Mickelson didn’t have a birdie while shooting a 75 that left him at 2 over, three shots clear of the cut in his first Colonial since the twotime champ missed the cut in 2010.
Spieth said the key to the recovery was a short bogey putt at 14, his fifth hole, that dropped him to 3 over after he opened with a par 70. The 23-year-old broke from his recent routine by seeking caddie Michael Greller’s input on the 4-footer.
“He said, ‘Hit this one with confidence and walk it in,’” Spieth said about his third bogey in the first five holes.
Spieth immediately followed with a 35-foot birdie putt at No. 15, then had four birdies in the first five holes of Colonial’s front nine. That included two birdies on the “Horrible Horseshoe” of holes 3-5.
T h e 2 0 1 5 Mas t e r s a n d U.S. Open champion had no bogeys over the final 13 holes after seven bogeys and a double bogey among his first 23, which offset six birdies in his opening round.
Simpson made a 7-footer at the par-3 16th, then put his approach at 17 just inside 3 feet for a birdie that tied Casey. Kisner made a 14-foot birdie on his final hole, the n i n t h , t o j o i n S i mps o n . Moments later, Lee rolled one in from 27 feet at the 18th. Piercy had a shot at the outright lead at the ninth, missing from 24 feet.
Garcia had six birdie s, while Rahm didn’t get his first until 17 while finishing with two straight.
Si Woo Kim, playing for the first time since winning The Players Championship two weeks ago, had an 8 on the par-4 ninth after his pitch from greenside bunker went dead right off his club and rolled into the water.
Kim had to go across the pond for his drop and hit another ball in the water, then tossed his club in as well after finally reaching the green on the next shot. He made a 15-footer for quadruple bogey, and finished with a 73 to miss the cut at 5 over.
Senior PGA: Vijay Singh shot a 4-under 68 amid wind so strong that play was temporarily halted at the Senior PGA Championship, taking a one-shot lead.
Singh’s two-day total of 10-under 134 was one shot better than Billy Andrade, who also shot 68 at Trump National in Sterling, Va.
The wind delay lasted 41 minutes and prevented the afternoon starters from finishing their second rounds. A mong t h e m wa s B e r n - h a rd L a n ge r, who made two straight birdies to pull within two shots of Singh at the turn.
The 54-year-old Singh was nine shots better than the field average of 77.
European Tour: Belgian Ryder Cup star Thomas Pieters, Italy’s Francesco Molinari, and Scotland’s Scott Jamieson shared the halfway lead in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. The trio sit on 7-under par overall, one shot ahead of German golfer Max Kieffer. Pieters, who tied for fourth at the Masters in his last event, shot 3-under 69 to set the target for the late starters.
LPGA: Sung Hyun Park shot a 7-under 65 to take a two-stroke lead after the second round of the LPGA Volv i k Championship i n Ann Arbor, Mich. The South Korean enters the weekend at 12 under, with Minjee Lee (66) and Suzann Pettersen (67) tied for second.