The weekend will include Brooks Koepka<\/a> in his return to the PGA Tour after four seasons on the Saudi-funded LIV Golf League. The five-time major champion remains perplexed by the poa annua greens and settled for a 68 on the easier North to make the cut on the number.<\/p>\n Missing will be Xander Schauffele<\/a>, the two-time major champion and San Diego native who saw his 72-tournament cut streak end. His last weekend off at a tournament was the 2022 Masters.<\/p>\n Koepka was 14 shots behind. The question now is whether anyone can catch Rose.<\/p>\n Rose opened with a 62 on the North, which was 7.139 shots lower than the field average. He knew what awaited him on the South course — the site of two U.S. Opens — and wound up with a 7-under 65 that was 7.392 shots lower than the field average.<\/p>\n It added to a 17-under 127 — breaking by two the previous mark held by Rose in 2019, Tom Lehman<\/a> in 2005 and Lennie Clements<\/a> in 1996 — and a four-shot lead over S\u00e9amus Power<\/a> of Ireland, who had a 66 on the North.<\/p>\n Amazingly, it was the same score for the 36-hole lead in The American Express last week. PGA Tour golf in Palm Springs and San Diego are nothing alike. Rose is playing that well.<\/p>\n Joel Dahmen<\/a>, who got into Torrey Pines because two courses allow for a larger-than-normal field, had three eagles in his round of 63 on the North and joined Max McGreevy<\/a> (67 on North) in a tie for third, six shots behind.<\/p>\n Rose said he was aware he faced a stronger test Friday. He only had to look at the leaderboard to see North Course — NC — listed next to so many names to figure that out.<\/p>\n “I don’t go into a deep dive, but I kind of saw the ‘NC, NC, NC, NC, NC, NC, NC’ on the leaderboard, so by process of elimination, I kind of knew what I was facing today,” he said.<\/p>\n “In some ways I was using that as extra patience, obviously being 10 under already,” he said. “It’s a tough situation when you don’t have a great day on the North and then you have to go and find a score on the South. So I had the added benefit of being able to go and play the South I thought with the right mindset to play it, which is kind of respectfully.”<\/p>\n He found his groove early with a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-3 third and then a tough 10-footer for par on the fourth. He was seeing his lines. He was seeing the ball go in. It gave a sense of freedom, and he took off from there.<\/p>\n Rose hit long iron to pin-high 8 feet away for eagle on the par-5 sixth, closed out the back nine with two birdies and never really let up.<\/p>\n The cut fell at 3-under 141.<\/p>\n “I’ll tell you, that’s good golf,” said Power, who made a long eagle putt to close out his round on the North. “You could shoot 2 under and play pretty well here. It’s just the standard is high.”<\/p>\n Koepka received another warm reception on as fine a day as the San Diego coast can offer, with warm sunshine and a blue sky and more red numbers under par than Torrey typically yields.<\/p>\n Koepka needed a better round, and he gave himself a good start with a mid-iron to 12 feet for eagle on the par-5 eighth hole. He birdied the par-5 fifth hole and took advantage of the short par-4 seventh to get some breathing room.<\/p>\n He doesn’t play to make the cut. But he did want to keep playing.<\/p>\n “I think yesterday I was excited to play — nervous, and kind of didn’t know what to expect – but today felt more normal, I guess,” Koepka said. “Don’t me wrong – I definitely still got antsy. Maybe a little bit of nerves just trying to figure it out and see where my game’s at, too, right? I feel like I’m playing really well. It’s just been a long layoff.”<\/p>\n Schauffele was coming off a win in Japan in the fall, the only tournament he played as he wanted to be home with his son born some five months ago. He took bogey from a few funny bounces and bad lies on the short par-4 seventh on the North, and then nearly pulled off an extremely difficult shot behind the green to a back pin on the par-5 ninth, his final hole. He missed the birdie putt from 8 feet to reach the weekend.<\/p>\n Scottie Scheffler<\/a> now takes over the longest active cut streak at 65, still not halfway to the record 142 held by Tiger Woods<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 30, 2026, 08:26 PM ET SAN DIEGO — Justin Rose scored even better on the notorious South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-440276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Justin Rose followed his opening-round 62 with a 7-under 65 on Friday, breaking the 36-hole record at Torrey Pines that he shared with Tom Lehman and Lennie Clements.\u00a0Abe Arredondo-Imagn Images<\/p>\n