The 30-year-old American sank 11 birdies against two bogeys to stand on -11 after 36 holes in the PGA FedEx Cup playoff opener at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee. <\/p>\n
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The two Aussies in the field, Adam Scott (-4) and Min Woo Lee (-2), have performed well but will need to make a significant mark in the third round to challenge Scheffler.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I did a lot of stuff well,\u201d Scheffler said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI gave myself a lot of looks, hit some nice iron shots and was ableto make some birdies.\u201d Four others have also fired 61s at the layout, the most recent being England\u2019s Justin Rose in 2023. <\/p>\n
South Korean Im Sung-jae fired a 66 to stand second at -8 with Norway\u2019s Viktor Hovland. Sweden\u2019s Ludvig Aberg was another stroke adrift at -7 while Colombian Nico Echavarria, Americans Brian Harman and Jordan Spieth and England\u2019s Tommy Fleetwood, the reigning playoff champion, are all -6 for the tournament.<\/p>\n
Im and Spieth are among the players outside the top 50 in season points needing to gain positions to qualify for next week\u2019s playoff event in St. Louis. <\/p>\n
Scheffler, a four-time major winner, won his season opener in January in the California desert for his 20th career PGA title but he has settled for five runner-up finishes this year without another victory. <\/p>\n
Im seized the lead early in the second round, making birdies on the first three holes and five birdies on the front nine,which he opened and closed with 16-foot birdie putts. <\/p>\n
Scheffler birdied the first five holes, sinking putts from 12 and 19 feet on one and two, just outside two feet on the par-fivethird, and five feet on the fourth and fifth. <\/p>\n
\u201cI got off to a good start, those first couple of putts, and then kept the momentum going,\u201d Scheffler said.<\/p>\n
He birdied seven to share the lead but missed the green at the par-three eighth and made bogey. Again he grabbed a share of the lead with a seven foot birdie putt at 10 but found water off the tee at 12 and made bogey to fall back. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you are in the fairway out here you feel like you can attack some of these pins and when you\u2019re not you feel like youcan bogey any hole,\u201d Scheffler said. <\/p>\n
He would seize a share of the lead again on 13 when he blasted out of a fairway bunker to inside of five feet and sank the birdie putt. <\/p>\n
\u201cHit at poor shot at 13 but was able to get out of the bunker there, hit a nice shot and give myself a look,\u201d Scheffler said.<\/p>\n
Scheffler swiped the solo lead with a birdie on 15 when he landed his approach just outside 10 feet and sank the putt, then added a tap-in birdie at the par-five 16th to reach 10-under. <\/p>\n
\u201cI struck the ball nicely today,\u201d Scheffler said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully I\u2019ll do more of that the next couple days.\u201d <\/p>\n
A 15-foot birdie putt at 17 made it three consecutive birdies for Scheffler, who missed a 16-foot birdie putt before parring to miss breakingthe course record and matching his low round of the year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWas an underrated putt on 17. It was a really tough read,\u201d Scheffler said. <\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes when they are so straight from thatdistance you want to find a break.\u201d <\/p>\n
World No. 2 Rory McIlroy, who was last through 18 holes after Scotsman Robert Macintyre withdrew due to a knee injury, fired a 70 to stand to be +2, 13 shots behind Scheffler.<\/p>\n
The highlight of the day came from Germany\u2019s Matti Schmid, who aced the par-three fourth hole, the ball bouncing once before rolling in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Scottie Scheffler matched the course record with a nine-under par 61 to grab a three-stroke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-855737","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\/855737","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=855737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}