Bryce Molder on Friday had a one-stroke lead with three holes to play in the second round at Colonial when play was suspended because of darkness.
At nine-under, Molder was a stroke ahead of Webb Simpson and two in front of second-ranked Jordan Spieth and Patrik Reed. Simpson and Spieth completed their second rounds at the Dean and Deluca Invitational.
Simpson was eight-under after a 67. Spieth shot a 66, with four birdies in five holes after turning to the front nine. Reed had 10 holes left. He has a PGA Tour-high eight top-10 finishes this season.
Photo: AFP
The start of the round was delayed 5 hours, 30 minutes after thunderstorms overnight that lingered into the morning. When the first groups teed off early in the afternoon, the sky was clearing and became bright and sunny.
Play was stopped at 8:21pm with 61 of the 121 players still on the course. They were to return to complete the second round yesterday morning, scheduled to resume a little more than 11 hours after stopping. The third round is to be played after the cut is made.
Molder was the first-round leader after an opening 64, with six birdies on the front nine at Hogan’s Alley. He had five more birdies on that side on Friday, which would translate to an 11-under 59 on holes one to nine on the first two days.
In his first round, Molder was in the first group off the No. 10 tee on Thursday. He got to his seventh hole before a 1 hour, 15 minute weather delay, then came out to finish the seventh of his nine consecutive pars before all his birdies on the front side.
There were consecutive birdies after starting at No. 1 on Friday, and Molder hit his approach at the difficult fifth hole to within close range of the pin for another birdie. He chipped in from the front bunker at the par-three eighth.
His only slip-up through two days at Colonial was a double bogey at the 12th, when he hit his first two shots into the rough and three-putted not long before play was stopped.
Spieth went into the weekend in contention at home for the second week in a row, and at Colonial for the second year in a row. He tied for second at Hogan’s Alley last year, one stroke behind Chris Kirk.
The 22-year-old Dallas native was a stroke out of the lead after two rounds last week at the Byron Nelson, and was alone in second going into the final round before a closing 74 that left him tied for 18th.
After starting the second round with a three-putt bogey at the10th, Spieth had a couple of short birdies before another bogey at the 16th. His downhill putt that he hit at a 90-degree angle picked up speed and went well past the hole.
His birdie rush after the turn went through holes four and five, a par-three followed by a hole along the Trinity River that wrap up a difficult trio of holes known as Colonial’s “horrible horseshoe.”
Simpson had 17 consecutive rounds of 70 or higher before an opening 65 at Colonial.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier