Overnight leader Austin Smotherman finished seven shots worse off his opening round but still found the lead after an intriguing second day of the Cognizant Classic.<\/p>\n
The American followed Thursday’s 62 with a two-under 69 on Friday and holds a commanding three-stroke lead over Taylor Moore (67) at PGA National.<\/p>\n
Smotherman stayed red-hot, with a 55-foot birdie putt on the par-3 17th among the highlights.<\/p>\n
Moore is solo second after a second consecutive 67 and is followed by A.J Ewart (64) – the round of the day – at seven under. He is tied for third with Nico Echavarria (72).<\/p>\n
After their poor opening rounds, Brooks Koepka and Ben Silverman fought back and will return for the weekend.<\/p>\n
Koepka shot a five-under 66 on Friday, trimming eight shots from his opening round, while Silverman shaved six shots from his 73 a day before. This had them well within the cut line, and both are at two under headed into the weekend – nine behind leader Smotherman.<\/p>\n
“If I’m out here to try to make cuts, I’m probably done,” said Koepka, the five-time major championship winner who is a native of Palm Beach County and has a bit of a home-field edge this week.<\/p>\n
He has now made two of three cuts since returning to the PGA Tour earlier this year following a stint of nearly four years with Saudi-backed LIV.<\/p>\n
Koepka only hit six of 14 fairways on Friday, but putted the ball far better and made six birdies – four more than he had in round one.<\/p>\n
“I hit it a lot worse today,” Koepka said. “Didn’t drive it nearly as good. Iron play wasn’t as good, but the putter was better. Made a few adjustments after the round yesterday.”<\/p>\n
Ewart has been to the Cognizant before as a fan and remembers following Koepka around in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Coming into the week, I had never actually played the golf course, but I felt like I knew it just from watching it,” Ewart said. “Somewhat of a home game, yeah. It feels good.”<\/p>\n
The two Australians in the field, Karl Vilips and Cam Davis, both had disastrous second rounds to miss the even-par cut.<\/p>\n
Karl Vilips followed his opening 69 with a 78 for a five-over total, while Davis finished near the rear off the field after adding an 80 – the worst score of the round – to his 72 for a 10-over total.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Davis’ round included two birdies, eight pars, six bogeys, one double bogey and a triple bogey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overnight leader Austin Smotherman finished seven shots worse off his opening round but still found the lead after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-509227","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\/509227","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=509227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}