Spieth grabs lead at Travelers

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – The second round of the PGA Championship saw Brooks Koepka blitz out in front of the field… can he be caught? Here PGATOUR.COM’s writers tackle some of the big questions out of Friday at Bethpage Black. Brooks Koepka turned a one-shot lead into a seven-shot lead at the halfway mark of the PGA Championship. His 12-under 128 is a major championship record. Can we call this Tiger-like dominance yet? BEN EVERILL (Staff Writer): Woods’ 81 PGA TOUR wins might be saying, “hold my beerâ€�… But credit must come thick and fast if Koepka holds up the Wanamaker trophy again on Sunday. That will be four wins in his last eight major starts – not done since Woods in 2005-06. No one has ever defended the U.S. Open and PGA Championship in their career. That’s new history. SEAN MARTIN (Senior Editor): I don’t think we can, for two reasons. Tiger’s best runs lasted longer and it extended beyond the major championships. Woods’s win in the 2002 U.S. Open was his seventh victory in 11 majors. He won two majors by double-digits. A win this week would be Brooks’ fourth in his last eight majors. Also, Woods has 81 PGA TOUR victories. Brooks has five. I’m not ready to go down that road yet, no matter how good Brooks has looked. CAMERON MORFIT (Staff Writer): It’s absolutely Tiger-like. Woods led by six halfway through the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and wound up winning by 15. How many will Koepka win by? That’s the only suspense left in this tournament. ROB BOLTON (Fantasy Insider): Sorry, but I’m not taking that bait. Indeed, Koepka is in his own lane right now, but it’d take years for it to merge with that narrative. Leave hyperbole to social media and Bartolo Colon home run calls. RELATED: Tee times | Leaderboard | Koepka builds seven-shot lead How many shots will Koepka win by (or not by)? EVERILL: He talked about winning double digit majors in his career… I think he can win by double digits here. 10 shots. MARTIN: Five. I think there has to be some regression at some point. That said, it’s not like he’s simply relying on a hot putter. He shot 65 on Friday and the longest putt he holed was 11 feet. It’s his iron play that has been incredible. And that is less likely than the putter to desert a player in an instant. Bethpage Black is just too punishing to allow a player to keep cruising like he has, though. MORFIT: Scott doesn’t inspire confidence with his putting, and Spieth looks pretty suspect with his driving, so I’m going to say 14. BOLTON: Even fantasy leagues that reward bonus points for margins of victory don’t care much about it after only two rounds, but if Koepka is threatening Rory McIlroy’s record eight-shot runaway (in 2012) after 54 holes are in the books, then give me the over. Adam Scott flirted with an extremely low round before settling for a 64. Koepka has a 63 and 65. Danny Lee shot 64. Has Bethpage Black lost its bite? EVERILL: No. This course still is plenty long. And the rough has plenty of bite. But it has always given you the chance to score if you find the fairway. Ask Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm, Sergio Garcia, Bubba Watson or Bryson DeChambeau how hard it is… they were among those to miss the cut. MARTIN:  I wouldn’t go that far. The rough is still extremely penal and the fairways are narrow. They’re fairly soft, though, which makes them play wider. And the greens are still relatively soft by major championship standards. And they’re fairly flat, which makes it easier to get on a roll. MORFIT: These are the best players in the world. It’s what they do. And after watching what the back nine has done to these guys, including Rory’s horrific 40 Friday, I’d say the place still has plenty of bite. BOLTON: Not quite. Remember, these are professional golfers. Bethpage is performing exactly how the PGA of America wants it to given the conditions and setup. It’s penalizing poor play and rewarding form commensurately. Jordan Spieth has found his way to second place, albeit seven shots back. Are we seeing the end of the slump once and for all? EVERILL: I really want to say yes but his stats this season, and this week, give me pause. Spieth hit just nine greens on Friday but rode a hot putter. Also his scoring average on Thursdays and Fridays has been fine this season… it is the weekends where he has tanked. If he puts four rounds together I’ll be more positive. MARTIN: I can’t make that proclamation yet. The weekends have been his biggest struggle. He’s played well on Thursday and Friday several times. But any uncertainty about one’s swing gets exposed under the pressure, and that’s been the case this year. I’ll have to wait to at least until Monday to make that proclamation. MORFIT: By his own admission he has made everything he’s looked at on the greens. I don’t like the big misses I’ve seen in his driver, and he was T88 in Driving Accuracy through the first two rounds. That tells you how great his putting his been, and that he’s not really back yet.  BOLTON: Two rounds don’t make or break a slump or surge and I want to see him put four together, but his first 36 holes at Bethpage match his confident rhetoric pre-tournament, so let’s not lose sight of that connection. Tiger Woods missed the cut. Does this make you think twice about his chances at the U.S. Open next month? EVERILL: I’m going to cut Woods some slack. He didn’t play between his Masters win and this week and then was sick in the lead up. He looked underdone and lethargic at times but by Pebble Beach, where he’s had so much success, you can assume he will be healthier. MARTIN:  I don’t think so. Pebble Beach is so much shorter. I thought his ball-striking looked solid on Thursday. He was just plagued by some silly mistakes. And he just couldn’t find a fairway on Friday. He won’t have to rely on his driver at Pebble Beach, though. I think Tiger still had the Masters hangover when he turned up at Bethpage Black. He’ll likely play the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide before the U.S. Open so that will give him another opportunity for some reps. MORFIT: Tiger just didn’t have it this week from the moment he double-bogeyed his very first hole, the brutish 10th. He drove it badly and made silly mistakes, which makes his Masters win look even more remarkable in retrospect. Was he tired? I don’t know. He’d better sharpen up for Pebble, though, because you can’t hit three of 14 fairways there, either. BOLTON: Hardly. While he’d never lay the foundation for doubt and excuse, it still would be nice to know sooner if he’s not feeling 100 percent. Assuming he’s healthy, all systems will be go at Pebble. It’s been fascinating to witness his learning curve as a capable 43-year-old.

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GREENSBORO, N.C. — Brandt Snedeker couldn’t block out the buzz that surrounded his first-round 11-under 59 at the Wyndham Championship. He refocused just in time to reclaim the lead. Snedeker followed his historic opening score with a 67 on Friday to take a two-stroke lead into the weekend at the Wyndham Championship. A day after becoming the 10th player in PGA TOUR history to break 60, Snedeker moved to 14-under 126 halfway through the final PGA TOUR event before the FedExCup Playoffs. “You hear people telling you every two seconds, `Mr. 59,’ or saying how cool it was to watch it,” Snedeker said. “So, yes, totally on your mind.” D.A. Points shot a 64 to reach 12 under — one stroke ahead of C.T. Pan, who also had a 64. David Hearn, Peter Malnati, Keith Mitchell, Harris English, Brett Stegmaier and Sergio Garcia were 9 under. Snedeker, the 2012 FedExCup champion, won this tournament in 2007 before it moved across town to the par-70 Sedgefield Country Club. He had the tour’s first 59 of the year during the first round. But it wasn’t easy to follow a score like that. Of the nine previous players who have broken 60 on the TOUR, six had to play the next day and only one has shot better than 65 in that round: Justin Thomas, who had a 64 in the second round of last year’s Sony Open. “You can’t ignore it, you can’t try to forget about it,” Snedeker said. “Hardest thing is trying to get back into a rhythm. … Now I’m better equipped for the next time I shoot 59 and play the next day.” By the time Snedeker teed off Friday afternoon, that low score had held up for a one-stroke lead. It temporarily slipped away when he had three bogeys on the front nine. He reclaimed the lead late in his round with some nifty putting. He sank two putts longer than 30 feet, one for eagle on the par-5 15th and another for birdie on the par-4 16th, and wrapped up with the best two-round score at this tournament since Carl Pettersson’s 125 a decade ago. “When I finally convinced myself to hit a few putts, they started going in,” Snedeker said. “Over 72 holes, you’re going to have stretches where balls don’t go in the hole, you’ve got to be able to kind of overcome, be patient, wait for the long ones to fall, and luckily I made a couple coming down the stretch.” Points, who has made only one cut since January and failed to reach the weekend in 19 of his 24 tournaments this season, had a strong front nine with three birdies and an eagle on the par-5 fifth hole, where he sank a 40-foot putt. He has finished in the top 20 at this tournament twice since 2014, and after starting far off the bubble at No. 214 on the points list, could play his way into the FedExCup Playoffs this weekend. “Basically, I know this is possibly my last event of the year, so I haven’t been grinding really hard,” Points said. “It seems to be paying off.” Pan, a 26-year-old from Taiwan, had birdies on three of his final four holes to climb the leaderboard. He sank a 20-foot birdie putt on No. 17 and an 8-footer on the 18th to match the best round of his young career. He also shot 64s last year at the Travelers Championship and The RSM Classic. “I love this course,” Pan said, adding that his “trajectory tends to be lower than compared to other guys, so I think I have an advantage here.” Among the other highlights: Brian Gay had the day’s best round, a 63 tarnished only by a bogey on his final hole on which he missed a 4-foot par putt. And Mitchell opened with five consecutive birdies to briefly raise the possibility of a second sub-60 score in two days, before slipping back later in his round. “It’s definitely a different feeling,” Mitchell said. “But it’s a feeling you try to get comfortable with because you want to be in that zone.” A key subplot at Sedgefield every year is the push by bubble players to earn postseason spots. The top 125 players on the points list make the field for THE NORTHERN TRUST in New Jersey, and everyone from No. 122 to No. 132 is playing this weekend. Bill Haas, who at No. 150 is in danger of missing the FedExCup Playoffs for the first time, made the cut at 3 under. Garcia, at No. 131, also is trying to make it for the 12th straight year. Johnathan Byrd — who at No. 183 probably needs to win or finish alone in second place to earn enough points to qualify — remains in the mix at 8 under. “It’s kind of an easy mentality in a sense,” Byrd said. “Just got to play amazing or go home, or go to the (Web.com Tour) finals.”

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