{"id":591378,"date":"2026-04-18T08:21:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591378\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T08:21:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T08:21:17","slug":"bernhard-langer-68-breaks-age-to-share-senior-pga-championship-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/591378\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernhard Langer, 68, breaks age to share Senior PGA Championship lead"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apr 16, 2026, 08:21 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>BRADENTON, Fla. &#8212; <a data-player-guid=\"f2b562db-dd1a-f481-a24c-399a5dec118c\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/261\/bernhard-langer\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bernhard Langer<\/a> had a double bogey and still broke his age by two shots as the 68-year-old German posted a 6-under 66 on Thursday, giving him a share of the lead after the opening round of the Senior PGA Championship.<\/p>\n<p>Langer, who already holds the record with 12 senior majors, played his final six holes in 5 under par, highlighted by an eagle on the par-5 17th hole at Concession Golf Club.<\/p>\n<p>He was tied with <a data-player-guid=\"0dd09f6f-6c13-3dd1-a0b6-085d67976b8b\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/529183\/miguel-angel-jimenez\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Miguel Angel Jim\u00e9nez<\/a>, <a data-player-guid=\"63b0595f-3851-3143-c717-bc9148b9701f\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/159\/brian-gay\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Brian Gay<\/a> and <a data-player-guid=\"87ceb940-406d-9020-278b-06ca9837ecd5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/2\/steve-allan\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Steve Allan<\/a> of Australia. Langer now has shot his age or better 43 times.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s fun to shoot my age,&#8221; he said. &#8220;So whenever I shoot my age or better, usually I&#8217;ve played some good golf. That&#8217;s one of the goals these days, especially when you play a difficult golf course, and these greens here are very difficult.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This is the first year of a three-year contract for Concession to host the Senior PGA Championship, the oldest of the senior majors. It&#8217;s also the only senior major Langer has won only one time, in 2017 at Trump National in Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>Jimenez, 62, had an eagle on the par-5 seventh hole and went out in 31 before cooling on the back nine. Allan played bogey-free, picking up birdies on all but one of the par-5s. Gay birdied three of his final four holes.<\/p>\n<p>They were one shot ahead of <a data-player-guid=\"99332df3-3ee4-d9e9-6543-5d5fa8fb8d12\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/693\/ben-crane\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Crane<\/a>, <a data-player-guid=\"3f0c0b9b-17ff-d7de-32a2-cb9d8703cc4e\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/167\/retief-goosen\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Retief Goosen<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/5345544\/thammanoon-sriroj\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Thammanoon Sriroj<\/a>, the 56-year-old Thai who had five wins on the Asian Tour. Crane is making his senior major debut having turned 50 last month.<\/p>\n<p>Two-time Masters champion <a data-player-guid=\"d67d0913-0f38-3b83-c85f-f3dfa85fcd76\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/329\/jose-maria-olazabal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Olaz\u00e1bal<\/a>, three-time major champion <a data-player-guid=\"0618f476-e6cd-5f5e-3652-d95541cd8fce\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/186\/padraig-harrington\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Padraig Harrington<\/a> and <a data-player-guid=\"0ce81735-ef47-7048-dd1f-6ad35c91cc84\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/74\/greg-chalmers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Greg Chalmers<\/a> were at 68.<\/p>\n<p><a data-player-guid=\"cdb79a4a-3679-25c4-6f65-80471bd579d7\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/golf\/player\/_\/id\/576\/henrik-stenson\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Henrik Stenson<\/a> also made his senior debut &#8212; he turned 50 on April 5 &#8212; and opened with a 72. Stenson, the 2016 British Open champion, had been on Saudi-funded LIV Golf since 2022 but was relegated from the league last fall.<\/p>\n<p>He is not eligible for PGA Tour Champions events until one year after his last LIV appearance, but this major is run by the PGA of America.<\/p>\n<p>Langer&#8217;s round was a foot away from being even better. But his 6-iron to the 11th green narrowly missed, leaving him a downhill lie in a bunker to a short pin. Trying to open the blade, he sent it screaming across the green toward a cart path. He chipped to 12 feet and missed the putt.<\/p>\n<p>But he made up for it on the 17th, hitting a 3-iron hybrid and then holing a 60-foot eagle putt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If I would putt like that the rest of my career, I would be extremely happy,&#8221; Langer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 16, 2026, 08:21 PM ET BRADENTON, Fla. &#8212; Bernhard Langer had a double bogey and still broke&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-591378","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\/591378","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=591378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}