ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Daniel Berger loves playing in Florida in March. For most everyone else Friday in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Bay Hill made it feel like a spring preview of the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
Berger was on his game again in the most demanding conditions, leaning on a steady diet of\u00a0fairways and greens and feeling just as good about his lag putts as he did\u00a0the five birdies he made in a round of 4-under 68 that gave him a five-shot lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’ve just got to stay patient and take what the course gives you,\u201d Berger said. \u201cAnd when you have an opportunity, you’ve got to take advantage because there’s not many of them out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berger was at 13-under 131.<\/p>\n
Akshay Bhatia posted the low round of a balmy afternoon with a 66 to get within five of the lead. Ludvig Aberg (71), Collin Morikawa (71) and Sahith Theegala (67) were another shot back.<\/p>\n
Staying patient was a challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like Sunday afternoon greens, but it’s only Friday,\u201d Harris English said after a hard-earned 72. \u201cI might have fixed three ball marks today because you can’t find them. It’s the U.S. Open in spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morikawa came up with a color chart for the greens, which already were yellow by Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re getting brown and they\u2019re going to be very, very brown \u2014 if not purple \u2014 by Sunday, and that\u2019s just part of this week,\u201d he said. \u201cYeah, that’s the color scale we tend to see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ben Griffin was one inside the cut line of 2-over 146 when he faced a 30-foot par putt on the 18th. He ran that nearly 15 feet by the hole, missed it and was cleaning out his locker.<\/p>\n
Scottie Scheffler was stunned when his bunker shot on the 15th rolled out by the hole and never stopped rolling until it went off the green 30 feet away.\u00a0He chipped that in for par. But on the 18th, his 30-foot birdie putt that he barely touched raced some 10 feet by for a bogey and a 71, leaving him 10 shots behind.<\/p>\n
He turned and slung his golf ball into the water to vent, and after signing his card was asked how much tougher it would be on the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re already dead. I\u2019m not sure how much deader they can get. Like 15 is completely dead,” he said. \u201cWhen it hit the green, I thought I hit it to 3 feet. And then it bounced crazy forward. I don’t know how that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
He turned to his caddie, Ted Scott, and said, \u201cHow did that ball bounce forward?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSame way the ball bounced backward on 9,\u201d Scott replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been like this before,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cTypically here if you go late Friday, they\u2019re pretty much already dead. It\u2019s not anything unusual. It\u2019s a good test. It\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is what Bay Hill has become in recent years. The cut at 2-over 146 actually was lower than it has been the previous two years when the Arnold Palmer Invitational became an elevated event.<\/p>\n
Xander Schauffele finished with two straight bogeys to ruin an otherwise solid round of 71. Rory McIlroy played in the morning and had only one bogey in his round of 68 to move up the leaderboard, only for Berger to match his score. McIlroy was nine shots back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don’t get any rain the next couple days \u2014 which it looks like we won’t \u2014 it’s going to be really difficult,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cIt’s difficult even if you hit the ball in the fairway. You’re hitting good iron shots to 35, 30 feet all the time, and then you’re not going to make a lot of those.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of that makes the task of catching Berger a little more daunting.<\/p>\n
He opened with a 25-foot birdie putt, and his three birdies on the back nine where in the 6-foot range. But he was rarely under much stress on the long putts that he lagged reasonably close, no small task on greens with so little grass.<\/p>\n
Berger is among those who has not earned a Masters invitation, so this could be a big week. A win gets him in. Even a runner-up finish would get him in through the world ranking.<\/p>\n
In front of him are 36 holes on a course that doesn’t allow anyone to get too comfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a place where you can\u2019t really force it, you can\u2019t really try to make things happen. It\u2019s just going to happen,\u201d Aberg said.<\/p>\n
It happened to Justin Thomas, who is competing for the first time since the Ryder Cup in September because of surgery on his lower back. This was not an easy re-entry. The two-time PGA champion opened with a 79 and followed with another 79.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying as hard as I can to give myself a little bit of grace of how long I haven\u2019t played and how difficult this sport can be,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cBut at the same time, I expect more out of myself. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any situation where I feel like I should shoot 14-over par for two days.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Daniel Berger loves playing in Florida in March. For most everyone else Friday in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1242,1238,2205,28,12561,115,1335,139,141,140,110,1237,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-181858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-app-professional-sports","9":"tag-app-sports","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-golf","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-orange-county","15":"tag-orlando","16":"tag-orlando-headlines","17":"tag-orlando-news","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-sports-news","20":"tag-tampa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}