SURREY, British Columbia \u2014 Michael Brennan and Derek Hitchner each sit at 11-under par and share the 36-hole lead at the Fortinet Cup Championship following Friday\u2019s second round at Morgan Creek Golf Course.<\/p>\n
Brennan set the early pace with a course-record 7-under 63 in the morning wave, but his mark didn\u2019t last long. Hitchner, playing in the afternoon, fired an 8-under 62 to claim a share of the lead and set a new course record.<\/p>\n
The pair leads James Piot and Patrick Newcomb by two strokes heading into Saturday\u2019s third round.<\/p>\n
Brennan, the No. 1 player in the Fortinet Cup standings, has won three of his last five starts on PGA TOUR Americas. The second-year pro out of Wake Forest has now held or shared the 36-hole lead in three of his past six events, including the Fortinet Cup Championship. His second-round 63 was also his 11th bogey-free round of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n
Hitchner, ranked No. 9 entering the week, has been a model of consistency down the stretch, with four top-15 finishes in his last five starts. That stretch includes back-to-back runner-up finishes at the CRMC Championship presented by Northern Pacific Center and the ATB Classic. A win this week would move him to No. 3 in the standings and secure his Korn Ferry Tour card for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
All players completed their opening rounds Friday, with 66 players making the cut at even par. Third-round tee times are scheduled to begin Saturday at 7:30 a.m. and run until 1:00 p.m. off the No. 1 tee, with groups going off in twosomes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SURREY, British Columbia \u2014 Michael Brennan and Derek Hitchner each sit at 11-under par and share the 36-hole…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[712,49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-172398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}