Photo credit: PGA Tour Champions (@ChampionsTour)
By Jeremy Harness
Golf can change dramatically from one day to the next, and Saturday’s second round at the PURE Insurance Open at Pebble Beach showed that.
Bernhard Langer, who entered Saturday’s second round behind only one stroke, did not light it up like he and first-day leader Scott McCarron did on Friday, but he was proficient enough to grasp hold of the top spot heading into the final round Sunday.
Starting on the 10th hole Saturday, Langer got off to a bit of a slow start, bogeying his seventh hole before picking up a birdie at the scenic par-5 18th to draw even for the round.
Then he really picked things up on his back nine. He ran off three birdies in a row at holes two through four before picking up shots on both the sixth and eighth holes to finish with a round of 67 and a one-shot lead.
To accomplish this, he hit 9 of his 14 fairways as well as hitting 14 of his 18 greens in regulation in the second round. He made four fewer birdies on Saturday, but he did a much better job of getting up and down, as he recorded only one bogey.
McCarron, meanwhile, did not get any momentum at all, and by shooting an even-par 72, he lost quite a bit of ground to the field, as he is now four strokes back at eight-under in a tie for the fifth position.
Vaulting into the second spot and only one stroke back of Langer is Kenny Perry, who shot a nine-under 63 on Saturday. He shook off a bogey on his first hole and birdied four of the next eight holes. He then picked up even more steam with an eagle at the par-5 second before he birdied the fourth and ran off three birdies in a row at holes six through eight.
Scott Parel sits one shot behind Perry after his second-round score of 66 while Jerry Kelly, who came within a shot of winning the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship last year, is three shots behind the lead after his 66 on Saturday.
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