Lee bettered his first-round score by six shots to stay within touching distance of the lead at the tournament’s halfway point.<\/p>\n
The world No.48 is joint 10th at six-under the card after following up his opening-round 71 with a 65.<\/p>\n
Fellow Australians Cameron Davis (68) and Karl Vilips (70) are at two-under and one-over, respectively.<\/p>\n
Lee, the 27-year-old from Perth chasing a sixth professional win and first since March 2025, trails leader Ryo Hisatsune by five strokes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Two Japanese players made the most noise on another warm day at TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course on Friday.<\/p>\n
Two-time Phoenix Open champion Hideki Matsuyama had a run of six straight birdies to shoot 64 in the morning wave to take the lead at 10-under.<\/p>\n
He was surpassed by his countryman in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Hisatsune (63) was at five-under after two birdies on the front nine, then electrified the rowdy crowds by going six-under in a five-hole stretch, highlighted by his chip-in at 17, to reach 11-under 131.<\/p>\n
“It was very lucky,” Hisatsune said through an interpreter.<\/p>\n
“A nice tee shot, but I kind of pulled it little bit into the water. Some more reset and make it, so going to be more fun.”<\/p>\n
Hisatsune, 23, tied for second at Torrey Pines last week after missing the cut in the season-opening Sony Open. He had four top-10s as a PGA Tour rookie last year.<\/p>\n
Overnight leader Chris Gotterup shot 71 to join fellow American Pierceson Coody (68) in a tie for third at eight-under.<\/p>\n
Top-ranked Scottie Scheffler (65) closed out with a three-foot birdie on 18 to extend the PGA Tour’s longest cuts streak to 65. He was seven shots back at four-under.<\/p>\n
“Felt a bit lost out there at times yesterday, so today felt a lot better; felt more in control of my game,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You can obviously see that through the cleaner card today.”<\/p>\n
Two-time champion Brooks Koepka (69) had a much tougher go of it, finishing at two over to miss the cut in his second tournament since being reinstated by the PGA Tour.<\/p>\n
With AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lee bettered his first-round score by six shots to stay within touching distance of the lead at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-463729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463729","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=463729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}