The in-form Hend and American George McNeill \u200ceach shot a seven-under-par 65 at Wakonda Club in Des Moines on Friday (local time) and will take a one-shot lead over four players \u200cinto the weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Australian John Senden, Americans Vaughn Taylor and Tag Ridings and defending champion Miguel Angel Jimenez of \u200cSpain sit at six-under 66.<\/p>\n
Hend racked up \u200bnine birdies \u200con Friday, including four over the final six holes. The Aussie veteran is on a roll after breaking through for his first PGA Tour \u200bChampions win last month at the Trophy Hassan II in Morocco.<\/p>\n
Hend said it takes “more than a couple days” to get used to an unfamiliar course, though that didn’t stop \u200bhim \u200bfrom going low in his first \u200bvisit to Wakonda.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t play the last four holes [in practice], \u200cso I didn’t know what the last four holes were like,” Hend said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“So on the 18th tee, I said to my caddie, ‘Where’s the green?’ He’s like, ‘I think it’s over there.’ He walked up, trying to get the proper line. I am just trying to learn the golf course and \u200bhopefully by Sunday afternoon I’ll know what to do.”<\/p>\n
McNeill turned 50 last fall and is playing his first season on the PGA Tour Champions. He has made the cut in all eight starts and has two runner-up finishes, including at last week’s team event, the American Family Insurance Championship, where he played with Kenny Perry.<\/p>\n
“Honestly, \u200cI’m just trying \u200cto play \u2060like I have been. I feel like I played fairly well all \u200byear,” said McNeill, who made an eagle at the par-5 13th to go with six birdies and one bogey.<\/p>\n
Tied for seventh at five-under 67 are \u200bAmericans Doug Barron, Matt Gogel and \u2060Brett Quigley, Spaniard Jose Maria Olazabal, Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke and Aussies Richard \u200bGreen and David Brandson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The in-form Hend and American George McNeill \u200ceach shot a seven-under-par 65 at Wakonda Club in Des Moines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-733244","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\/733244","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=733244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}