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Don\u2019t miss the third round of the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, S.C.<\/p>\n
The back-to-back birdies offset a sluggish start that saw the 28-year-old Australian bogey two of his first five holes. <\/p>\n
Earlier in the week, Ruffels noted he was \u201cnot much of a tinkerer\u201d and said he was confident in his short game but admitted switching to a mallet putter at the start of the year \u2014 breaking of a 10-year stretch with his previous shortstick. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis putter seems to just give me a little bit better speed on mis-hits, so just keeps the speed up a little bit,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
That change also seemed like a prudent, vital choice for Ruffels during the round Friday. He ended the front nine with another birdie, and at one point a share of the lead with five other players.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a weird position that I\u2019m in, where I feel like I\u2019ve got YouTube Golf on my back or something like that, proving that we\u2019re good players and we can play good golf,\u201d he explained. \u201cGrant [Horvat] nearly beat me to get here, and here I am in a good position after two days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of good players in YouTube golf,\u201d he added. \u201cI feel a lot of the fans that watch us are really in my corner and want me to do well, which is awesome to see. … I\u2019m just proud of myself that I played two good rounds on the PGA Tour. I get two more cracks at it to see if I\u2019m any good or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even in the down moments when he had to work the hardest, the putter seemed to save Ruffels: He was able to save bogey on the par-4 seventh thanks to his work on the greens. <\/p>\n
Getting there wasn\u2019t easy, though. He called his lie off his approach shot \u201cas bad as you can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ball must have plugged. I actually with Jackson [Suber] called him over to check if it was plugged. The ball was sitting so far down you could barely see it and then surrounded by a nest of grass,\u201d Ruffels described the scene on No. 7. \u201cOne of the worst lies I\u2019ve seen, and this rough is usually pretty playable. <\/p>\n
\u201cI swung at it real hard, but there was so much grass there, the club just stopped,\u201d he added. \u201cThe ball barely moved. Then I had my work cut out for me just to make bogey. I managed to save bogey [thank, which I was actually quite happy about.<\/p>\n
Overcoming nerves \u2014 and rain<\/p>\n
Ruffels said after Thursday\u2019s opening round that he had been thinking about the tournament since qualifying for it via The Q weeks ago, and that there was some anxiety stemming from that wait. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about what it\u2019s going to be like when I finally get there,\u201d he said after Round 1. \u201cWhen The Q is finally announced and once The Q is announced, what it\u2019s going to be like with all the extra subscribers and followers and fans that are out here. Yeah, it\u2019s been on my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
He called the 4-under 67 first round a \u201cbig confidence boost\u201d \u2014 which included a bogey-free back nine while facing heavy winds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt happens in outdoor sports but we kind of got a bit of a rough draw, to be honest,\u201d he said of starting in the rain Thursday before getting dried by the breezy conditions later in the round.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis morning it was really cold and we had the opposite wind direction, blowing 15 to 20 miles an hour,\u201d Ruffels said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nPGA Tour highlights 2026: ONEFlight Myrtle Beach Classic, Round 2<\/p>\n
Watch the best moments from the second round of the Myrtle Beach Classic at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay aggressive, pedal down. Ryan Ruffels and his caddie, Duane Smith, were at an intersection coming off a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-582714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}