Key events
The wind is picking up, and the players are beginning to suffer. Matt Fitzpatrick sends his approach at 3 wide left; Matthieu Pavon into a bunker on the right. Ryan Fox allows himself to be buffeted around on the 5th green and misses a tiddler for par. He drops back to -4. All that early talk of a possible low score may have been wide of the mark. Having said that, Ryo Hisatsune is doing as well as anyone out on the course, two under for his round now with birdies at 4 and 7; he’s -5. See also Tony Finau, whose back-to-back birdies at 7 and 8 take him up to -5 as well.
Jhonattan Vegas wasn’t 80 yards out on 2; he was just 58. Yet he still doesn’t find the green with his wedge. That’s a dismal mistake, and his putt up from the fringe never looks like dropping. A bogey-bogey start, and there goes that lead. He was four clear three holes ago. Meanwhile Jon Rahm hits the turn in 33. The two-time major winner is right in this. Here, should he win this week, he’ll have a chance of joining Rory et al in the career-slam club at Portrush. But we’re getting a wee bit ahead of ourselves here.
-6: Kim (2), Pavon (2), Fitzpatrick (2), Vegas (2)
-5: Fox (3)
-4: Rahm (9), Finau (7), Hisatsune (6), DeChambeau (6), Stevens (4), Poston (4), Thorbjornsen (3), Scheffler (2), Homa (2)
Now then, Dame Laura Davies and Henni Zuël know of what they speak. Because now Maverick McNealy goes even closer than Nico Echavarria with his tee shot on the short par-four 14th. His effort ends up two feet and five inches away from the hole, which is soon filled with the ball for eagle. The 29-year-old McNealy is beginning to come good on the promise flagged early in his career, with a couple of decent showings at last year’s PGA and this year’s Masters, plus his first PGA Tour win coming last November at the RSM Classic. He’s -3 through five of his holes today, and properly involved in this championship now.
More trouble for Jhonattan Vegas. The leader started nervously yesterday, but got away with some early scrappy play, before hitting some form. He’s begun in skittish form again here, and now clatters his drive into trees down the left of 2. He’s got no option but to take his medicine and chip back out into the fairway. Unless he gets up and down from 80 yards, the leader will find himself hauled back into the pack in the shortest of orders.
Max Homa nearly aced the driveable par-four 14th yesterday. Now it’s Nico Echavarria’s turn. It’s playing at 305 yards today (as opposed to yesterday’s 341) and the 30-year-old Colombian creams his tee shot to three feet and nine inches (as opposed to Homa’s one foot and nine inches). In goes the eagle putt, and Echavarria is level par now for his tournament. On Sky, both Dame Laura Davies and Henni Zuël raise the possibility of a hole-in-one here today. Given Si-woo Kim’s antics on 6 yesterday, and indeed at Troon last year, he may just be our man.
Jhonattan Vegas finds a route from out of the trees down the right of 1. He just about manages to reach the edge of the green, but his ball stops on the lip of the bunker front-left, and he’s got next to no stance, balancing on tippy-toes when he tries to chip close. He doesn’t chip close, leaving it a good 25 feet short. He gives the long par putt a good chance to drop, but it breaks left just before the hole and rolls three feet past. He makes the one coming back, but that’s a bogey, and after the double on 18 yesterday afternoon, that’s a four-shot lead reduced to one in the blink of an eye.
-7: Vegas (1)
-6: Kim (1), Pavon (1), Fitzpatrick (1)
-5: Poston (2), Thorbjornsen (2)
-4: Bradley (8), Rahm (7), Hisatsune (5), Noren (5), DeChambeau (5), Higgo (4), Stevens (3), Fox (2), Scheffler (1), Homa (1)
Neither Scheffler nor McIlroy get close with their symmetrical chips at 1 and 10. Scheffler seriously underhits the uphill 20-foot putt he leaves himself, and that’s an opening bogey. His playing partner Max Homa drops a stroke too, the punishment for finding greenside sand. The third member of the group, Kim Si-woo, makes a sandy par save though. Over at 10, McIlroy nearly holes a chip from the fringe, but has to make do with par. He’s given his partner Xander Schauffele a read for opening birdie, though; the defending champ moves to level par.
-8: Vegas
-6: Kim (1), Pavon, Fitzpatrick
-5: Poston (2)
-4: Noren (5), DeChambeau (4), Higgo (3), Stevens (2), Fox (1), Thorbjornsen (1), Scheffler (1), Homa (1)
The leader Jhonattan Vegas takes to the tee. It’ll be understandable if he’s feeling the pressure, looking to become the first Venezuelan to win a major, and only the sixth player ever to win the PGA wire to wire. (Brooks Koepka was the last, in 2019.) He slices his opening drive into the trees down the right. His playing partners Matt Fitzpatrick and Matthieu Pavon find the short stuff.
… so having given Scottie Scheffler the grandstand introduction, he double-crosses himself and sends his approach at 1 towards the gallery to the left of the green. He’ll have a hell of a chip from there, from thick rough over sand. A pleasing symmetry to this.
… so having given Rory McIlroy the grandstand introduction, he carves his second at 10 towards the gallery to the right of the green. He’ll have a hell of a chip from there, from thick rough over sand. Meanwhile his playing partner, the defending champion Xander Schauffele, leaves his approach short and right, and immediately hollers “Mud ball!” Ah yes, mud balls …
By contrast, the world number one Scottie Scheffler is teeing off late on merit. He’s now the tournament favourite, and if he keeps striping them down the middle like he’s just done at the 1st, he’ll take some beating. He’s not even had his best stuff here this week; in fact he was strangely out of sorts for the first few holes on Thursday, hitting a series of weird clunkers, before snapping back into focus. And yet look where he is: -5, just three off the lead. Any sort of early surge from the big Texan could – nah, will – send shockwaves through the entire field.
Rory McIlroy takes to the tee, late on day three. Normally that’d mean he’s right in contention, but it’s the vagaries of the last-minute split-tee rejig that’s got him here. He only just crept under the cut line at +1, nine off the lead. Having said all that, a super-low number around here today – and he holds the course record here, shooting 61 en route to winning the Wells Fargo in 2015 – so nothing is out of his reach quite yet. And he crashes his first drive, at 10, down the right-hand side of the fairway. It’s on? Probably not. But then again, it’s Rory, so it’s not yet off.
Some short-game magic on display here. Ryo Hisatsune shortsides himself in a greenside bunker at 4, but elegantly holes out for birdie to move to -4. Meanwhile back on 3, Bryson DeChambeau wangs a wild tee shot over the trees on the left and onto the 4th hole, then sends his second back over those trees and behind the green, down a bank into thick grass. But he opens the face of his club and lobs smoothly onto the fringe, rolling out to six feet. He mops up for par, and that’s a big save. He remains -4.
Without things ever getting out of hand in the regular-Tour-event style, we’ve had some impressive low scoring this week. Jhonattan Vegas, Max Homa and the aforementioned Kim Si-woo have posted 64s, Matthieu Pavon carded a 65, Cam Davis shot 66. Keep it on the fairway, and Quail Hollow is there for the taking. That might be doubly true today, because after the morning rain, the rough may be lusher, but the greens will be a tad softer and more receptive. So there’s a score out there for someone to make their titular advance on Moving Day. Having said that, the wind is expected to get up as the day goes on, so nothing’s ever simple.
Birdie for Eric Cole at 3; he moves to -3. Cole made one of the two aces we’ve had here at Quail Hollow this week, at the 4th on Thursday. That was real fine, but nevertheless pales in comparison to the one recorded by Kim Si-woo last night at the 252-yard 6th. A low power-fade with 5-wood into the front of the green, the ball rolling out on an inexorable journey into the cup. Off down the track he went at pace, and with feeling, in the club-flinging style. A magical moment. It was the longest hole-in-one in major-championship history, beating the record set by … Kim Si-woo, who aced the 238-yard 17th at Troon in the Open last year! Man sure likes a long par-three.
A couple of potentially significant early moves. Jon Rahm, who has been woefully out of sorts in the majors since defecting to LIV, but is finally looking his old self this week, has birdied 1 and 3 to move to -4. He’s joined there by Bryson DeChambeau, whose major-championship form, by contrast, has arguably been boosted since his move to LIV. He guides in a 30-foot right-to-left swinger up 1 for birdie, and to get off to a flier.
-8: Vegas
-6: Pavon, Fitzpatrick, Kim
-5: Homa, Scheffler
-4: Rahm (4), DeChambeau (1), Thorbjornsen, Bezuidenhout, Fox, Smalley, Poston, MacIntyre, Stevens, McCarthy, Gerard
The start of today’s play was delayed by thunderstorms, and so the tee times were put back by three-and-a-half hours, and switched from two-balls to three-balls on split tees. Had that not happened, the pre-tournament favourite Rory McIlroy and the defending champion Xander Schauffele, both of whom squeaked under the cut line last night, would be finishing up right about now. But now, due to the vagaries of the split-tee system, they’re not teeing it up until 6.38pm BST, so this blog will have some BONUS HOT RORY ACTION that it otherwise would have missed out on. Yay! Yay? We’ll see, he’s been up and down this week and no mistake. He’s probably too far off the pace anyway, but he’s come back from seemingly impossible situations at Quail Hollow before, so let’s write nothing off just yet. It is Moving Day, after all.
Preamble
Welcome to Moving Day at the 107th PGA Championship! After 36 holes, the top of the leaderboard looked like this …
-8: Jhonattan Vegas
-6: Matthieu Pavon, Matt Fitzpatrick, Kim Si-woo
-5: Max Homa, Scottie Scheffler
-4: Michael Thorbjornsen, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Ryan Fox, Alex Smalley, JT Poston, Robert MacIntyre, Sam Stevens, Denny McCarthy, Ryan Gerard
-3: JJ Spaun, Aaron Rai, Taylor Pendrith, Bryson DeChambeau, Richard Bland, Davis Riley, Alex Noren, Ryo Hisatsune, Tony Finau, Ben Griffin
… while these (selected) big names missed the cut …
Akshay Bhatia, Shane Lowry, Sepp Straka, Padraig Harrington, Jordan Spieth, Hideki Matsuyama, Ludvig Åberg, Justin Thomas, Min Woo Lee, Rickie Fowler, Jimmy Walker, Gary Woodland, Patrick Reed, Im Sung-jae, Patrick Cantlay, Jason Day, Will Zalatoris, Cameron Smith, Martin Kaymer, Shaun Micheel, Brooks Koepka. Justin Rose, Dustin Johnson, Jason Dufner, and all 20 of the PGA club professionals including the 2023 hole-in-one hero Michael Block
… and that left us with a tee sheet – revised from two-balls into three-balls off split tees, as a result of a three-hour weather delay – that looked like this (all times BST). It’s on!
Starting at hole 1
16.43 Joaquin Niemann, Tyrrell Hatton, Wyndham Clark
16.54 Keegan Bradley, Marco Penge, Lucas Glover
17.05 Viktor Hovland, Tommy Fleetwood, Jon Rahm
17.16 Cam Davis, Adam Scott, Joe Highsmith
17.27 Tony Finau, Ben Griffin, Eric Cole
17.38 Davis Riley, Alex Noren, Ryo Hisatsune
17.49 Taylor Pendrith, Bryson DeChambeau, Richard Bland
18.00 Garrick Higgo, JJ Spaun, Aaron Rai
18.11 Sam Stevens, Denny McCarthy, Ryan Gerard
18.22 Alex Smalley, JT Poston, Robert MacIntyre
18.33 Michael Thorbjornsen, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Ryan Fox
18.44 Si Woo Kim, Max Homa, Scottie Scheffler
18.55 Jhonattan Vegas, Matthieu Pavon, Matt Fitzpatrick
Starting at hole 10
16.48 Rafael Campos, Matt Wallace, Tom McKibbin
16.59 Beau Hossler, Corey Conners, Luke Donald
17.10 Nicolai Højgaard, Harry Hall, Austin Eckroat
17.21 Byeong Hun An, Collin Morikawa, Cameron Young
17.32 Daniel Berger, Brian Campbell, Taylor Moore
17.43 Nico Echavarria, Harris English, Stephan Jaeger
17.54 Rasmus Højgaard, Thorbjørn Olesen, Maverick McNealy
18.05 Justin Lower, Tom Kim, Sergio Garcia
18.16 Brian Harman, Elvis Smylie, Kevin Yu
18.27 David Puig, Bud Cauley, Michael Kim
18.38 Chris Kirk, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele
18.49 Max Greyserman, Sam Burns
