×

Cameron Young takes 5-stroke lead at Cadillac Championship

Pro Golf

DORAL, Fla. — Cameron Young finally made his first bogey of the week at the Cadillac Championship. It barely put a dent into his lead going into the weekend.

Young shot a 5-under 67 on Friday to get to 13 under and take a five-shot lead at the midway point of the $20 million signature event at Trump International Doral.

Young’s lone blemish: a bogey at the par-4 14th, where his chip from an awkward sidehill lie didn’t reach the putting surface. Otherwise, he was flawless — just as he was Thursday when he had a bogey-free 64 to grab the låead.

He got the stroke he droppeåd at the 14th back two holes later, when he drove the green at the par-4 16th and coolly two-putted for his 14th birdie of the week.

“There’s a lot of golf to be played on a difficult golf course,” Young said. “But so far, I’ve played well.”

Young played with Scottie Scheffler; the world’s No. 1 player had a bogey-free 67 but ended the day exactly where he started it — seven shots off the lead.

Nick Taylor (70), Alex Smalley (71) and Jordan Spieth (71) were tied for second. Gary Woodland (69) was alone in fifth at 7 under and Scheffler was in a logjam of players — Alex Fitzpatrick among them — at 6 under.

“I definitely need to not get further away,” Scheffler said. “åNo, it depends on how the golf course is playing. All I can do is go out there and be committed to what I need to do and that’s pretty much it.”

Young even had mistakes work out for him. He hated the birdie putt he hit on the par-4 13th, starting to walk toward the hole with the ball about halfway there.

Some guys do that when they know they’ve just made a putt.

Young wasn’t in that mindset. He gave an almost-apologetic wave when the ball wound up dropping into the cup.

“I was absolutely disgusted about halfway there,” Young said. “I think my read netted out to be OK, but I just thought it was going to go a little bit left and then a little bit right and it ended up going six inches left and six inches right. … When you’re putting well, some of those, they tend to wobble into the hole and that one did.”

Spieth rolled in a birdie at the par-4 18th, an absolute rarity through the first two rounds at Doral. The 18th on the Blue Monster course is a serious test, with water lining the left and seriously narrowing the fairway for all but the biggest hitters.

Spieth’s birdie was the sixth on the 18th through the tournament’s first two days.

“It’s just a really hard tee shot for most guys,” Taylor said.

The 18th even gave Young some trouble. Or tried to, anyway.

Young’s second shot at the finishing hole bounced off the base of the bleachers, coming to rest in the middle of a nest of cables on the ground well behind the green. He took a drop, didn’t get a great lie of out that, and still chipped to veritable tap-in range to save his par.

“I may have a two- or three- or four-shot lead starting tomorrow, but it just goes away so fast out here,” Young said. “There’s no sense really playing like you have a four-shot lead. You might as well play like you’re four back.”

Elsewhere:

n Nelly Korda is tied for the lead on the LPGA Tour. She played bogey-free for 67 in the Riviera Maya Open at Mayakoba for a share of the lead with Brianna Do.

n Stewart Cink shot his second straight 7-under 65 on Friday to take a two-stroke lead in the Regions Tradition in his bid to won consecutive senior major titles. Cink won the major Senior PGA Championship two weeks ago in Florida for his third victory of the year on the 50-and-over tour.

Starting at $2.99/week.

Subscribe Today