It’s a bunched up leaderboard, and there were moments that caught our attention,on Friday at Aronimink, including DeChambeau’s trunk-slam.
, but a whopping 44 players are within five shots of them. So while we have almost no idea which way this event is going to break over the next two days, there were plenty of good, bad and ugly moments on a chilly Friday.
Here’s what we saw:Remember Chris Gotterup? In the springtime of Rory and Cam Young and the Fitzpatrick brothers, one might have forgotten the 26-year-old who. But Gotterup re-announced himself Friday with a 5-under 65, the round of the day at windswept Aronimink. On this somewhat motley leaderboard, gotta think a lot of Philly fans will get behind the New Jerseyan.
—While Rory McIlroy battled back to make the cut on Friday, DeChambeau’s round carried little suspense on whether he’d play the weekend. He closed with three straight birdies for a 71 that papered over a mostly sloppy 36 holes.
On the heels of missing the cut at Augusta, this was another perplexing week, and it’s fair to wonder ifThe 2019 British Open champion had a quintessential “one of us” moment on the 214-yard par-3 17th when he hit his tee shot two-thirds of the distance and into the water. Was it a shank? A cold top?
Whatever it was, it was certainly ugly and led to a double bogey, though Lowry got in the house at 4 over and will play the weekend. —Your co-leaders through 36 holes? Alex Smalley and Maverick McNealy. Neither player has been in this spot, but both have played steady, patient golf that this Aronimink setup requires.
It’s a tight leaderboard behind them, with many of the games biggest stars mixed in with other Cinderella stories. This weekend should be a blast. Friday for a while was all fun and games around Garrick Higgo, the man who was a minute late for his Round 1 tee time and penalized two shots.
ESPN put up a countdown clock for his afternoon tee time and, indeed, But the round itself was no fun, as the South African shot 40 going out and made two more bogeys before a too-little-too-late birdie on the 9th , which added up to a 76 and missed cut—undoing all the hard work to shoot 69 on Thursday after the penalty. —One would have thought a windy and cool Aronimink would suit Scotland’s Bob MacIntyre, but the world No. 12 double bogeyed the 3rd hole and bogeyed the 9th to miss the cut by a shot.
He also missed the cut at the Masters and this is his first year with two MCs in majors. While the most famous club pro in the field heads home , a new everyman hero is here: Ben Kern, general manager of Hickory Hills Golf Club in Grove City, Ohio.
Playing in his third PGA, Kern shot a Friday 67 with six birdies in a round that everyone in the field would have signed up for when waking up Friday. He got the Marty Smith ESPN treatment after the round and nearly choked up a few times, such as when asked how he did it: “Keep your head down and keep going. ” Seems a likable guy and at 1 over for the tournament, we’ll see him this weekend.
—Give PGA pro Michael Block credit for largely backing up the hype with a strong even-par 70 in his opening round. But his Friday 75 wasn’t enough to reach the weekend, ending his chance at a sequel tohe took at this event three years ago.
Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of him—oh wait,It was an ugly break more than ugly shot, but when Theegala took a rip out of a fairway bunker on the par-4 10th, his ball clipped a tree limb about 20 yards ahead and then … nothing. Three minutes passed and no one had a clue where his balled ended up, which is remarkable given this is a major championship with cameras all over the course.
Theegala had to play it as a lost ball and replay from inside that same bunker. He triple-bogeyed the hole and is 1-over for the event. Jeff Ritter is the managing director of SI Golf. He has more than 20 years of sports media experience, and previously was the general manager at the Morning Read, where he led that business’s growth and joined SI as part of an acquisition in 2022.
Earlier in his career he spent more than a decade at SI and Golf Magazine, and his journalism awards include a MIN Magazine Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award for sports reporting. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a master’s from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. John Schwarb is a senior editor for Sports Illustrated covering golf.
Prior to joining SI in March 2022, he worked for ESPN.com, PGATour.com, Tampa Bay Times and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He is the author of The Little 500: The Story of the World’s Greatest College Weekend. A member of the Golf Writers Association of America, Schwarb has a bachelor’s in journalism from Indiana University.
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