Freshman Aaron Du followed up Thursday’s -6 performance with yet another impressive round on Friday, shooting five under (67) to take sole lead of first place at the John Burns Intercollegiate. The Beijing, China native will enter tomorrow’s final round with a three-stroke lead over his nearest competitor, Shane Ffrench of USC. Du and all other Bear scorers saw improvements over their first round scores, helping Cal progress five spots in the standings to ninth place.
Du’s lone mark on an otherwise sparkling scorecard was a bogey on his first hole (hole 15) which he quickly rectified with a birdie three holes later. He then went on to collect five more en route to his score of 67 (-5). Now, with 133 strokes through two rounds, Du is -11 overall with 18 holes to play.
“I felt good today on the course, confident and committed with every shot,” Du said. “I started on the harder holes today, but handled it pretty well. For tomorrow, I’d like to keep playing according to my game plan and be process-focused.”
After two rounds, both sophomore Sampson Zheng and grad student Finigan Tilly are tied for 50th in the standings with 147 strokes each. Both showed improvement over their first round scores: Tilly shot a 70 (-2) – seven strokes lower than Thursday’s round while Zheng shot a 73 (+1) – one stroke lower than his opening round. Meanwhile, redshirt freshman Ethan Chung produced the Bears’ second-best score on Friday. With a score of 69 (-3), Chung improved 10 strokes and is now tied for 60th. On the individual side, freshman Simon Kwon continued to play well. After starting the round in first place, he is now tied for third after producing a score of 72 (E) today.
As a team, The Bears improved 17 strokes over their first round overall score to shoot a combined 279 (-9) on Friday. The group’s collective score of 4.09 on par 4s is the fourth best score in the field.