SAHITH THEEGALA CAME out on the right side of a rollercoaster morning at the Phoenix Open on Friday, firing eight birdies in a seven-under 64 for the early second-round lead.
Seamus Power and Graeme McDowell were both looking to climb the leaderboard midway through their second rounds, sitting just outside the project cut of two-under.
Power sat on even par with 12 holes played, with McDowell one-under at the same stage.
US PGA Tour rookie Theegala, from California, had held a one-shot lead when darkness halted play at TPC Scottsdale on Thursday.
He returned Friday morning to bogey his last two holes and fall one shot behind South Korean Lee Kyoung-hoon.
But Theegala gathered himself during a short break and opened his second round with three straight birdies, rolling in a five-footer at the first and a four-footer at the second before reaching the green in two at the par-five third.
“I wasn’t too upset about the way it started,” he said of his day, which opened with him facing a 16-foot par putt at his penultimate first-round hole, the eighth.
“I put a good roll, just missed,” Theegala said. “And the next tee shot I put it under the lip of the fairway bunker.
I knew if I kept putting the ball in the fairway I’m going to have scoring opportunities, so it was nice to reset for the 30 or 40 minutes that I had in between the rounds there.”
Theegala, who was a standout amateur player at Pepperdine University, added another birdie at the fifth before he bogeyed the eighth again in the second round.
He birdied the 13th and 14th – where he rolled in a 33-foot putt from off the green – before closing with birdies at the 17th and 18th.
With afternoon starters still on the course, Theegala had a three-shot lead over FedEx Cup Champion Patrick Cantlay, who had five birdies in a five-under par 66 for a nine-under total of 133.
Canadian Adam Hadwin and American Talor Gooch were in the clubhouse on eight-under. Gooch climbed the leaderboard with a bogey-free seven-under par 65. He drained a 39-foot birdie putt at the par-three seventh and set off the big crowd at the stadium-style 16th with a 29-foot birdie bomb.
The rowdy atmosphere at a tournament that draws upwards of 100,000 fans per day was back in full force this year after the Covid-19 pandemic saw daily attendance limited to 5,000 last year.
“Any time you shoot seven-under, bogey-free, on the PGA Tour, you’ve done some good,” Gooch said. “And it was just capped off by the birdie on 16 and getting everyone hyped up. So that was fun.”
Among the late starters, American Xander Schauffele was making a move, grabbing four birdies in his first eight holes to move to eight-under for the tournament.
Defending champion Brooks Koepka was two-under on the front nine and seven-under for the tournament while first-round leader Lee had slipped back after a double-bogey at the par-five third.
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Meanwhile, at the Ras Al Khaimah Classic, Irish duo Cormac Sharvin and Jonathan Caldwell both ended the second round on level par, with the two players missing the cut by three shots.
New Zealand’s Ryan Fox followed up his opening round 63 with a 69, but remains on top of the leaderboard in the UAE on 12-under, three shots clear of the chasing pack.
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