The Offaly man powered back into the reckoning at the Tour Championship with a superb second round 63 that included the longest ever putt in the FedEx Cup playoffs<\/a>, but crucially, there are no Ryder Cup points at stake at East Lake.<\/p>\nIt means 2024 Irish Open champion Hojgaard only needs to finish tied-29th or better at the Belfry this weekend to jump above Lowry and secure his ticket to New York.<\/p>\n
A two-under par round of 70 sees him in a tie for eighth and four shots off the pace set by German Marcel Siem.<\/p>\n
Siem began the day in a four-way tie at the top but soon led on his own after making a lightning-quick start that featured an eagle and three birdies in his first eight holes.<\/p>\n
Siem eventually signed for a second-round 69 to move to nine under par and sit one clear of Matt Fitzpatrick heading into the weekend.<\/p>\n
But after dropping shots at the 18th, second and sixth holes, six-time DP World Tour winner Siem feels he could have gone even lower on Friday.<\/p>\n
He said: “It was a great start. My ego took over a little on the back nine because I hit really good shots.<\/p>\n
“On the 18th I got a bit unlucky with my drive, had a bad lie and missed the first short putt. Then on the first, I had two great shots. Misread that putt.<\/p>\n
“On the second, I hit a great drive. I thought it was in the fairway. It bounced to the right apparently, pretty bad lie. Misread read that putt for par as well. Next hole as well.<\/p>\n
“Then I finally hole one on the next, misread it again. Felt like I could have shot a bit lower today. So my ego took a bit over. That’s why you didn’t see me smiling.<\/p>\n
“I will be smiling soon.”<\/p>\n
Ireland’s Conor Purcell fell one stroke short of making the cut after an even par round 72 left him at one-over par for the tournament.<\/p>\n
The Dubliner got to three-under par with an eagle and two birdies in his first four holes but this was swiftly cancelled out by a double-bogey and two bogeys in a three hole spell.<\/p>\n
After steadying the ship on the back nine, Purcell was unable to find a birdie over the closing holes that would have garnered him a Saturday tee time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rasmus Hojgaard remains well-placed to overtake Shane Lowry for the final Ryder Cup automatic qualification slot after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-87424","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\/87424","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=87424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}