“Just a terrible day on the greens” was how Pádraig Harrington summed up his second round at the PGA Champions Tour’s Charles Schwab Championship and the Dubliner has lots of ground to make up if he’s going to end the year with the $1million bonus for topping the rankings.
An opening round of 70 left him six adrift of early pace setter Stewart Cink, but he was hoping to close the gap on day two and put himself in position to attack the final 36 holes and claim his fourth win of the year and with it, the number one spot in the Charles Schwab Cup.
He birdied both of the par-5s on the front nine at Phoenix Country Club and reached the turn at -2, and then picked up another on the par-4 11th. But bogeys on 12 and 16 – both par-4s – halted his momentum, and despite stemming the bleeding with a birdie-three on 17, he failed to take advantage of the closing par-5 and signed for a two-under 69. It’s a one-stroke improvement on day one, but he’s now fallen nine in arrears.
“Shot 69 to be 3 under T9th, 9 behind. Just a terrible day on the greens,” Harrington tweeted afterwards. “Two more days to turn it around.”
Cink carded a bogey-free 66 to move to -12, three clear of Bernhard Langer who’s come through to lead the chasing pack thanks to a round of 64 that beat the 67-year-old’s age by three.
“It was actually probably a cleaner round than yesterday as far as just my processes and the quality of the shots was probably a little bit better overall,” Cink said. “I just didn’t have the hot long putts going in today quite as much, but it was a really solid round.”
Langer, who already holds the Champions Tour record for tournament victories with 46, shot his age or better for the 21st time on the tour.
“Every once in a while I look back at my career and have to almost pinch myself and say, ‘Man, that’s pretty amazing what you’ve done the last whatever so many years,'” Langer said. “Like a day today, to shoot 64 — 3 under my age — not a whole lot of people can do that.”
Darren Clarke traded four birdies and three bogeys to turn in a one-under round of 70 that sees him climb two places up to a tie for 16th.
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