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<\/p>\nSAN DIEGO \u2014 When Justin Rose learned that his short birdie miss on the final hole in Thursday\u2019s round kept hin from setting the course record of 61 on the Torrey Pines North Course, he groaned. His next thought: \u201cWe\u2019ll go after the 36-hole record.\u201d<\/p>\n
MORE: Joel Dahmen makes 3 eagles in a crirtical round for this career<\/p>\n
It was an audacious consideration, because Rose was headed to the more brutish South Course on Friday in the Farmers Insurance Open, and it had played more than three strokes harder in the first round. To eclipse the tournament\u2019s best midway mark of 129, Rose would need at least a 66.<\/p>\n
He did better than that.<\/p>\n
The 45-year-old made an eagle and six birdies, including two to finish his round, to score seven-under-par 65 and lower the Farmers\u2019 36-hole record by two shots at 17-under 127. With those numbers, Rose has not surprisingly put some distance between himself and the chasing pack, with Irishman Seamus Power (66 on the North Course) standing the closest to him at four shots behind. The distance to make up for the next two players, Joel Dahmen (63, North) and Max McGreevy (67, North), is six strokes.<\/p>\n
Late in the day, when Dahmen saw Rose on the practice putting green, he stated the obvious: \u201cJust trying to keep up with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Orlando Ramirez<\/p>\n
In a week that began with a hot spotlight on Brooks Koepka and his return to the PGA Tour from LIV Golf, it is the American\u2019s Ryder Cup rival who has put a stranglehold on the leaderboard. Yet Koepka, who hadn\u2019t played on the tour in 3\u00bd years, no doubt achieved one big goal this week when he rallied with two birdies on his back nine on the North Course to shoot 68 and make the cut on the number at three under.<\/p>\n
Rose has been 14 shots better than Koepka so far, but all of field can only bow in admiration at a remarkable performance. Consider: The midway leaders in last week\u2019s The American Express, Scottie Scheffler and Blades Brown, also stood at 17 under. Anybody who understands the difference in difficulty between the desert courses and their conditions and Torrey Pines should be dumbstruck at what Rose has pulled off.<\/p>\n
Rose does have reason to be confident any time he plays at Torrey Pines. Twice the site of U.S. Opens, the South can be a major-like test, and Rose has 23 top-10 finishes in majors, including his 2013 U.S. Open win. In 15 starts in the Farmers, he had four top-10s and achieved his 10th career victory here in 2019 with a 21-under total.<\/p>\n
With three rounds of the tournament played on the South, its narrow fairways and deep rough would seem to serve the Englishman well. In an effort to back up his opening 62, Rose went over to the South and gained more than three strokes in both approach and putting, leading the field in both categories.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling great. Obviously, yeah, that was two special rounds of golf,\u201d he said. \u201cToday probably even more so just given it\u2019s hard to often follow up a low one. Obviously, this week you kind of go from the easy course to the tough course, but it was really kind of cool to keep momentum up out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rose noted that when he got into slight trouble, he didn\u2019t fire at flags and his putter came through on occasion. \u201cSo I felt like I managed the game pretty well, more than played perfectly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
After opening the tournament with a one-over 73 on the South Course, Koepka had ground to make up to reach the weekend, and though he didn\u2019t light up the North the way others had, the five-time major winner shot 33 on his front nine after starting on 10 (with an eagle and birdie). A bogey at the par-4 second put Koepka below the cut line, but he birdied the par-5 sixth and par-4 seventh, moving into the group of 17 players who were tied for 58th.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust wanted to play four days this week; I think that was important,\u201d Koepka, 35, said. \u201cPlayed really solid today. Drove it a lot better. Putting, I feel like I hit a lot of great putts, they just didn\u2019t go in. I felt like I was all over the lip today. But that\u2019s golf.\u201d<\/p>\n
He admitted that maybe he was a bit too conservative on his putting, and that the North\u2019s greens might have felt a touch slower. \u201cBut it\u2019s all right,\u201d he said. \u201cGot two days to figure it out and kind of really see where my game\u2019s at, kind of take the reins off and go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koepka\u2019s wife, Jena Sims, was at Torrey Pines on Friday with their son, Crew, and when Brooks walked off his last green, he swept up the boy and carried him to the scoring area.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it was great,\u201d Koepka said of his family\u2019s presence. \u201cI don\u2019t know the last time I\u2019ve actually made a cut and they\u2019ve still been there. \u2026 I wasn\u2019t making the cuts on the weekends [last year] at the majors when they were there. \u2026 It felt good. My son doesn\u2019t really know what\u2019s going on, but it\u2019s cool for me to have them here.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO \u2014 When Justin Rose learned that his short birdie miss on the final hole in Thursday\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":["post-448947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}