Photo courtesy Darren Carroll/PGA of America
Notes provided by Elias Sports Bureau/Quotes compiled by Dennis Miller
***If Haotong Li still finds himself atop the leaderboard when the day ends, he will become the 8th Asian golfer to hold a lead after 36 holes of a major championship. Should Li go on to close the deal and hoist the Wanamaker, he will do what the other seven could not. The best finish amongst the others is second place by T.C. Chen at the 1985 U.S. Open.
**When Y.E. Yang came back to beat Tiger Woods at the 2009 PGA Championship, Yang stood in ninth place, six shots back, after 36 holes of play at Hazeltine.
***Starting with his ninth hole of play in yesterday’s opening round, Haotong Li has played 28 holes without recording a score over-par. In Li’s major career only a streak of 30 consecutive holes, during the 2017 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, is better. Li recorded a third place finish that year, his best showing to date in a major. Lets see if Li can set his personal best in tomorrow’s third round.
***Tommy Fleetwood fired a 6-under 64 to jump into contention at the halfway point of this year’s PGA Championship. In 2018, Fleetwood shot a 6-under in the third round at the Masters, a 7-under in the final round at the US Open, and a 6-under in the second round at the Open. He is the first Englishman to shoot -6 or better in a round at all four majors and he is the seventh golfer all time to do that. The other six: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Adam Scott, Jason Day, Rory McIlroy, and Hideki Matsuyama.
Quotes from morning session
JOHN DEVER: Good morning, and welcome back to the 2020 PGA Championship here at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. We are joined pleased to be joined by Haotong Li, who posted a 65 today and is 8-under par. Haotong, you had five birdies but really what caught my eye on your scorecard is just one bogey through two rounds. Has that been a key to not make those mistake and start sliding the wrong way.
HAOTONG LI: Yeah, the last couple days I’ve been pretty much all hit in the right spot. Even if I miss the green, I still got a chance to up-and-down, and also got a lot — good lie in the rough.
Q. What was your confidence level coming in this week, given you had a disappointing finish in Memphis and then missing the cut at Memorial? Did you feel like a week like this was possible?
HAOTONG LI: Yeah, I didn’t even think I could play like this this week, especially, like you said, got no confidence. Probably it helped me clear my mind a little bit this week.
Tommy Fleetwood
JOHN DEVER: Welcome back to the 2020 PGA Championship here at TPC Harding Park. We’re pleased to be joined by Tommy Fleetwood. Thanks for being with us. He posted a second-round 64, which is tied for the lowest round of the championship here. He’s currently 6-under par. Tommy, something changed overnight for you. Was it the golf course changed? The conditions different? Or did you kick into gear?
TOMMY FLEETWOOD: I think a bit of both. Like I say, yesterday we played in tough conditions yesterday afternoon, and I was 3-under through 11 holes, so I wasn’t that far away. I had a couple of bad holes, and then I felt like I played really well coming in and gained one on 17 and bogeyed the last.
It was disappointing, but it was still all right. But today I think I drove it really well, put it in the fairway around here and it makes a massive, massive difference, and really didn’t give many shots away.
I made sort of a — you’re always going to look at what you didn’t do, made a poor-ish bogey from 2 on the fairway, but apart from that, any kind of up-and-down I got myself up-and-down, and any of the short testing putts I holed, and overall, that’s obviously why you shoot 6-under Yeah, today felt good. Felt like I worked my way into the round well and then gained momentum and then kept it going.