South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen on Friday stretched his cuts made streak to 15 with a bogey-free 66 to grab a share of the lead after the second round of the Players Championship.
The 34-year-old from Mossel Bay reached nine-under 135 to tie Kyle Stanley (66) with a two-shot lead at the TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach.
“We’re in a pretty good spot going into this weekend,” Oosthuizen said. “A lot of golf to be played around this course, and as we’ve seen the last two days, you can easily make a mistake.”
Photo: EPA
American J.B. Holmes was alone in third after shooting a three-under 69.
Veteran Vijay Singh was also lurking near the top of the leaderboard. The 54-year-old Fijian-Indian was by himself in fourth after shooting a 69 to reach six-under 138, three shots adrift of the leaders.
David Hearn of Canada (69), Rafa Cabrera Bello of Spain (70), Patrick Cantlay (70), Ian Poulter of England and Alex Noren of Sweden (71) were tied for fifth at 139.
Oosthuizen, whose only win on the PGA Tour was at the Open Championship in 2010, has 13 victories worldwide including eight on the European Tour.
His round on Friday, which began on the back nine, featured six birdies and no bogeys after he collected four birdies and one bogey in the opening round on Thursday.
The last time Oosthuizen missed a cut on the PGA Tour was last year’s the Open Championship, a run of 15 straight made cuts.
“I’m rolling the ball really nicely and feel really confident on the greens,” Oosthuizen said.
Defending champion Jason Day fashioned a 72 and was at 142 along with Phil Mickelson (70), Adam Scott of Australia (72), Henrik Stenson of Sweden (70) and first-round coleaders William McGirt (75) and Mackenzie Hughes of Canada (75).
World No. 1 Dustin Johnson followed up his first-round 71 with a 73 and stands at 144, nine strokes off the lead heading into the weekend.
Among those at 144 are Masters champion Sergio Garcia of Spain (71), Justin Thomas (71) and Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy (71).
Players who did not make the cut included world No. 5 Jordan Spieth, who finished at two-over 146.
American Jim Furyk, Marc Leishman of Australia, Bernhard Langer of Germany and Ernie Els of South Africa also failed to get into weekend play.
EUROPEAN TOUR
AFP, PORTIMAO, Portugal
England’s Matt Wallace on Friday extended his lead to five shots in the weather-affected Portugal Open.
Wallace, who carded 10 birdies in a flawless opening 63, added five more in the first 12 holes of his second round before play was suspended due to darkness, following time lost due to thunderstorms on Thursday.
The 27-year-old is on 16-under-par and five ahead of Germany’s Sebastian Heisele, who followed his opening 64 by carding three birdies and a bogey in 12 holes on day two.
England’s Ashley Chesters and France’s Matthieu Pavon had set the clubhouse target on nine-under after rounds of 71 and 69 respectively.
Pavon was one-under-par after nine holes when the first round was suspended. When play resumed early on Friday, he made four birdies on the back nine to post a bogey-free 68.
The 24-year-old carded six birdies and two bogeys in round two later on Friday, while Chesters had an eagle, four birdies and four bogeys in his 71.
“I had a bit of momentum this afternoon,” Pavon said. “I played very solid to finish round one this morning, which gave me confidence going into round two straight afterwards and I managed to make a few birdies straight away.”
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