Apr 17, 2026, 07:46 PM ET<\/p>\n
BRADENTON, Fla. — Brian Gay finally figured out how to play the par 5s at Concession Golf Club, making up ground with an eagle-birdie finish for a 4-under 68 to share the 36-hole lead with Scott Hend of Australia in the Senior PGA Championship on Friday.<\/p>\n
Hend had five birdies over the last eight holes for a 65, a far more conventional round of eight birdies against only one dropped shot.<\/p>\n
They were at 10-under 134, two shots ahead of major champions Stewart Cink (67) and Retief Goosen (69), with Ben Crane making his senior debut with a 69 to join them.<\/p>\n
But it was quite the adventure for Gay. He fanned a 5-iron into the bushes on the par-5 13th after starting the second round on the back nine of Concession. He twice went into the bushes trying to take his drive over the bunkers on the par-5 17th and then lipped out and took double bogey.<\/p>\n
Gay made a par on the next par 5 at No. 3, but only after hitting his second shot into a palmetto bush, taking a penalty drop and getting up-and-down. But he got his reward with an eagle on the par-5 eighth and closed with a birdie.<\/p>\n
“Another pretty good day. A little volatile,” Gay said. “Pretty similar to yesterday, except I butchered a couple of par 5s. Two of them with one bad tee ball, two good tee balls, but other than that, I putted well again. Just a couple of balls in the bushes.”<\/p>\n
Hend knows all about volatile. In the opening round, the Aussie went eagle-double bogey and then later birdie-double bogey on his front nine. He managed to rally with three straight birdies to open with a 69. It was a much cleaner card Friday.<\/p>\n
“I was disappointed in yesterday’s two double bogeys on the back nine, so I wanted to play that nine a bit smarter and a bit better today, so I didn’t short-side myself as much as what I did yesterday,” he said. “And it seemed to work out quite well.”<\/p>\n
Hend also took advantage of playing in the morning, the first one out when the greens were pure and the wind had not arrived along the Gulf Coast of Florida.<\/p>\n
Cink was within one shot of the lead until a bogey on his last hole. Goosen was bogey-free with just three birdies, only one of them on the par 5s.<\/p>\n
Justin Hicks had the low score among the club pros and another 69 left him four shots behind, along with Steve Allan, Greg Chalmers and Soren Kjeldsen.<\/p>\n
Bernhard Langer, the 68-year-old German who shot his age or lower for the 43rd time in the opening round with a 66, was 10 shots worse on Friday with a 76. That left him eight behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 17, 2026, 07:46 PM ET BRADENTON, Fla. — Brian Gay finally figured out how to play the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-593559","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\/593559","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=593559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}