Luke List chips onto the 15th green during the second round of The Players Championship on Friday in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. The former Baylor School golfer was tied for 10th after shooting a 68.
Rory McIlroy shot a 65 on Friday at The Players Championship and shared the 36-hole lead with Tommy Fleetwood.PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. - For Rory McIlroy, the easy way out was to go low under a tree 20 feet in front of him.
He was looking up.
Coming off a 10-foot eagle and a 20-foot birdie that moved him into a tie for the lead Friday during the second round of The Players Championship, McIlroy risked wasting a great finish by attempting a bold shot. His caddie, Harry Diamond, tried to talk him out of it. McIlroy instead opened the face of a pitching wedge and sent it straight up in the air, letting the right-to-left wind carry the ball onto the green 15 feet away.
"I stepped over it a couple times like, 'No, I think I can do this,'" McIlroy said. "I just opened up a wedge as much as I could and just took a swipe at it, and the ball sort of came out the way I thought."
He made par for a 7-under 65 and was tied with Tommy Fleetwood, who started even better than McIlroy finished. Fleetwood opened birdie-eagle-birdie on his way to a 67, giving him a share of the 36-hole lead for the second straight week. They were at 12-under 132, three shots clear of Abraham Ancer (66), Brian Harman (69) and Ian Poulter (66).
Two Baylor School graduates coming off top-10 finishes at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Luke List and Keith Mitchell, headed to the weekend in the top 10 at TPC Sawgrass.
Mitchell had just one bogey, six birdies and an eagle on the par-4 12th hole of the Stadium Course, which added up to a 65 and had him tied for seventh with Jason Day (66) and Kevin Kisner (68) at 8 under. Mitchell won the Honda Classic two weeks ago for his first PGA Tour victory.
"I just think when you're playing good, you want to keep rolling," Mitchell told GolfDigest.com. "I'm going to have plenty of times I'm not playing good, and it usually goes in stretches, so we're playing good and we want to keep playing as much as we can, and fortunately we've got a bunch of big tournaments this time of year, and so hopefully I can just keep going."
List shot a 68 and was another stroke back in a big group at 10th, tied with top-ranked Dustin Johnson (68), Byeong-hun An (71), J.T. Poston (69) Jon Rahm (68), Rory Sabbatini (69) and Vaughn Taylor (70). List's round ran the gamut - he had five birdies and a bogey, and after making a double bogey on the par-4 15th, he posted an eagle on the next hole, a par 5.
He's playing the PGA Tour's signature event, sometimes referred to as golf's "fifth major," for the third time. He'll be playing beyond 36 holes at TPC Sawgrass for the first time after missing the cut the past two years.
"I think I've had an under-par round each of the last two years but missed the cut because of a big round," List said during a Golf Channel interview after finishing Friday's round. "I'm just trying to minimize my mistakes. If you're playing really well here, you can score, but if you get out of position, that's when you have to be cautious. I feel like I'm a little more aware of that."
The third former Baylor golfer in the field, Harris English, was in position to hang around for the weekend after a solid first nine holes Friday that included a birdie on the famous island-green 17th hole. But a day after putting together a fairly steady round highlighted by an albatross on the 11th hole, his final nine Friday included a quadruple bogey on No. 4 and a closing bogey on No. 9. He shot a 76 and missed the 1-under cut by three strokes.
Making the cut but nine strokes out of the lead was Tiger Woods, who played solid golf except for one hole - the wrong hole. Woods put two balls into the water on the notorious 17th, leading to a quadruple bogey that wiped out a good start and forced him to settle for a 71 that had him tied for 39th.
Given the nature of this golf course - and a forecast for a shift in the wind - the fun might just be starting.
That's as far as McIlroy was willing to look, though.
"Winning is a byproduct of doing all the right things, and I feel like if I can continue to do those things well, hopefully I do end up with the trophy on Sunday," he said. "But there's a lot of golf to play before that."
It's going well for him so far.
Fleetwood knows a thing or two about fast starts. At last month's Mexico Championship, he started eagle-eagle.
This felt just as good, perhaps because of his standing in the tournament. After sharing the 18-hole lead, he was two behind when he teed off and back in the lead after just two holes. He made a 12-foot birdie on No. 1, holed a bunker shot for eagle on the par-5 second, then made a 25-footer on No. 3.
"I had a great range session warming up, and all you want to do then is make sure you try and take that out onto the course, which was very different," Fleetwood said. "I had the absolute dream start."