ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Aaron Rai holed out from 214 yards for an albatross in his 8-under 64 that left him tied for the lead with fellow Englishman Tommy Fleetwood after the second round of the Abu Dhabi Championship on Friday.<\/p>\n
Rai\u2019s second shot at the par-5 No. 2 pitched a few yards onto the green then rolled down into the cup at Yas Links Golf Club.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou couldn\u2019t see it from the back of the fairway, so it was a nice surprise,\u201d said Rai, who started his bogey-free round two strokes off the lead at the next-to-last event of the European tour\u2019s 2025 season.<\/p>\n
Fleetwood, the winner in 2017 and \u201918, was one of five players in a share of the lead after an opening-round 64 and the FedEx Cup champion added a 66 \u2014 helped by birdies at his first three holes \u2014 to move to 14 under for the week alongside Rai.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m having a lot of good rounds,\u201d Fleetwood said of his strong finish to the season, which has included being the top points scorer in Europe\u2019s Ryder Cup win in September and winning the India Championship last month. \u201cBut I\u2019m not stupid, and it\u2019s bitten me enough times.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three players \u2014 Andy Sullivan (67), Nicolai Hojgaard (67) and Richard Sterne (68) \u2014 were two strokes back, while Shane Lowry was one of four players a further shot behind after a 69.<\/p>\n
No. 2-ranked Rory McIlroy shot a second straight 68 and was 8 under overall, six strokes behind Rai and Fleetwood.<\/p>\n
McIlroy leads the Race to Dubai standings and is attempting to win the season-long points race on the European tour for a seventh time, which would put him just one behind Colin Montgomerie\u2019s record haul.<\/p>\n
Marco Penge (68) is McIlroy\u2019s nearest rival in the Race to Dubai and is a stroke ahead of the Northern Irishman, having played in the same group for the first two days.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP golf: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/golf<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 Aaron Rai holed out from 214 yards for an albatross in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-267868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267868","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=267868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}