It is the kind of leaderboard where your eye keeps drifting down the first page, in search of a winner. Jhonattan Vegas, the surprise first round leader at the US PGA, consolidated his position in the second round, despite a clumsy double-bogey at the treacherous 18th, but the chasing pack is full of players who have very little experience at this altitude. The scrolling stops at Scottie Scheffler, just three shots behind now.
It was a rollercoaster day for the Irish players dicing with a fluctuating cut line. After a dysfunctional first round, Rory McIlroy dragged himself back into the tournament with half a dozen birdies and then nearly threw it all away. He missed a two-foot putt for par on the 17th, and then dragged his tee shot violently left on the 18th. The ball bounced off the roof of a hospitality tent and came to rest inside the hazard line but not in the creek.
From a viciously hanging lie, McIlroy advanced the ball to the greenside rough, but mis-hit his chip from a tough lie and needed two putts from 40 feet to make the cut at one over.
Tom McKibbin finished at one under par and is safely through. Shane Lowry and Pádraig Harrington, though, both finished on two over and look set to miss the cut; Séamus Power was two shots further back.
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The scoring conditions were better in round two, but there were still some soggy patches at Quail Hollow. Lowry ran foul of a desperate lie with his tee shot on the 8th where at least a third of his ball seemed to be embedded in the turf. When he looked for a ruling, though, he was refused relief.
After a perfect 292 yard drive on one of the easiest holes on the course Lowry was just 57 yards from the green, with birdie on his mind. From that lie, though, there was no way of making a satisfactory contact with the ball and his second shot crash-landed in a greenside bunker; from there he made a bogey.
In a fit of rage, Lowry shouted “F**k this place,” and hammered the spot where his ball had been buried. On Thursday, Lowry was one of the players who thought that preferred lies should have been in play. Ultimately, that lost shot was crucial.
On his debut in the tournament, and in just his third appearance in a Major, McKibbin followed a first round 71 with a bogey-free 70 and handled himself with remarkable composure.
“I’m as calm as I can be,” he said. “It’s very daunting and very uncomfortable out there sometimes. One bad swing, one bad shot and you can easily make a double. You’re on the edge of your seat over every shot and praying you get a good one.
“There’s always trouble waiting around on any hole. Every shot out here is very hard, especially into the greens. That’s a little bit nerve-wracking but I feel like I like this type of golf. I find it hard to make a lot of birdies most weeks so on weeks when you don’t have to make as many, or it’s a little bit tougher, I quite like it.”
Max Homa was catapulted up the leaderboard with a stunning 64, the best score of the day and one of the heartening stories of the week. For the last 12 months his game had been in free-fall. After he finished tied third at the 2024 Masters, he climbed to number nine in the world rankings but by the time he returned to Augusta this year he had plummeted to 81st.
Homa’s long term caddie and lifelong friend, Joe Greiner, ended their professional relationship, out of the blue, and in the space of a few weeks Homa changed his coach, his clubs and even his golf wear, desperately searching for something that might spark his game.
“It’s been difficult because I felt like I was so broken,” said Homa. “There’s been weeks on the road and at home where it’s felt so poor. I’ve hit a lot of golf balls in the last seven months - like an absurd amount of golf balls. I’ve kind of realised that, as bad as it’s been, I’m quite good at golf.”
Homa will be in the top five heading into the weekend, two shots behind Vegas. The Venezuelan has won four times on the PGA Tour but has never finished inside the top 20 at a Major.
In the last 35 US PGA Championships, the winners have all been within six shots of the lead after two rounds. That brings Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, Matt Fitzpatrick and Rob MacIntyre, among others, into the picture. McIlroy is three shots outside that number, but he smashed all the stats trends at Augusta. Could you rule him out?
The winner could be anywhere.
