Wyndham Clark took advantage of generous fairways and soft course conditions to jump to the top of the leaderboard while Rory McIlroy overcame a sluggish start to card a 67 midway through second round action at the US Open on Friday.
Clark drilled his fourth birdie of the day on his penultimate hole to take the outright lead at nine-under par, a shot ahead of overnight leaders Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele, who went out in the afternoon wave.
“Fairways are pretty wide out here so you can just bomb it,” said Clark, who won the Wells Fargo Championship last month.
McIlroy birdied four of his last five holes including the par-three ninth where he narrowly missed a hole-in-one to move within a shot of the lead.
“I thought it might have hit the hole, which would have been...,” said McIlroy, trailing off.
“But I’ll take a two there. Obviously a great way to finish the round and a bit of a reversal of yesterday where I made that bogey at the last.”
The shot of the day so far came when Matt Fitzpatrick nailed a hole-in-one at the par-3 15, making him the first U.S. Open defending champion to record an ace in the tournament’s 123-year history.
LIV Golf’s Dustin Johnson made a mess of his second hole and finished with an unsightly quadruple bogey to tumble down the leaderboard but he battled back to card even par 70 and stay in the hunt going into the weekend.
Course conditions have been favourable for scoring due to a thick marine layer blanketing Los Angeles but the sun began to shine and wind picked up just as the second wave went out on Friday.
Firmer conditions should make the course located in the heart of Los Angeles a more fitting challenge for the world’s best at a major that prides itself as being the greatest test in golf.
The tournament is the first major since the bombshell announcement that the PGA Tour and rival circuit LIV would form a unified commercial entity. A report on Thursday indicated the U.S. Justice Department would review the plans.
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