NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) \u2014 U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun converted two of his three eagle chances, Cameron Young shot 30 on the back nine and Hideki Matsuyama was bogey-free, all of them part of another five-way tie for the lead Friday in the Hero World Challenge.<\/p>\n
Missing from a share of the lead was Scottie Scheffler, who briefly had the lead to himself. <\/p>\n
Scheffler holed an 18-foot eagle putt on the par-5 15th right about the time Young finally cooled off by missing an 8-foot par putt on the 18th. That put Scheffler at 11-under par for a one-shot lead that lasted all of one hole.<\/p>\n
He pulled his tee shot on the 16th for the second straight day, this time having to take a penalty shot to get out of a palmetto bush. Then, he misjudged the trajectory of a blind shot and it clipped the top of another palmetto bush, leading to a double bogey.<\/p>\n
Akshay Bhatia birdied the 18th for a 68 to join former U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark (68), Spaun (68), Matsuyama (66) and Young (64).<\/p>\n
They were at 10-under 134 at Albany Golf Club, where nearly half of the 20-man field was separated by two shots going into the weekend.<\/p>\n
Spaun made only five eagles all season and then seized on the scoring holes. He hit a 3-wood to 3 feet on the par-5 sixth and hit tee shot on the reachable par-4 14th settled 5 feet away, both of them eagles. He narrowly missed a 15-foot eagle putt on the par-5 15th.<\/p>\n
That allowed him to recover from a pair of bogeys on the opening four holes.<\/p>\n
\u201cDidn\u2019t get a great start, but salvaged a pretty decent round,\u201d Spaun said.<\/p>\n
Bhatia, in his final tournament before getting married, saved himself at the end with a nifty par save from short of the 16th green and then a bogey on the par-3 17th when he chipped through the green and into a bunker, blasted out and made a 15-foot putt to keep it from being worse.<\/p>\n
He has a new caddie for this week, Joe Greiner, the longtime looper for Max Homa until earlier this year. Bhatia likes that Greiner also swings left-handed and their communication is working.<\/p>\n
Scheffler had a 69 and was tied at 9-under 135 with Alex Noren (66) and Sepp Straka (69), with former Albany resident Justin Rose another shot back after a 68.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I did some good things out there. Just a few too many mistakes, but overall still felt pretty good,\u201d Scheffler said.<\/p>\n
Billy Horschel had a 68 and was five shots behind. He missed most of this year after hip surgery and is the only player in the 20-man field who has not secured a spot in the Masters. Horschel is at No. 45 in the world ranking \u2014 the top 50 at the end of the year get into the Masters \u2014 and a solid finish could settle that.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP golf: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/golf<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) \u2014 U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun converted two of his three eagle chances, Cameron Young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-328036","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\/328036","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=328036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}