Will Zalatoris Grabs 36-Hole Lead as Luck of the Draw Splits Field at PGA Championship

Zalatoris leads Mito Pereira by one shot, but players who teed off early on Thursday and late on Friday caught much softer weather at Southern Hills.

Zalatoris and Pereira will play in the final group on Saturday afternoon / USA Today

TULSA, Okla.— The hardest part about winning a major championship is the part you can’t control. It may also be the most underrated part of winning a major.

It’s called luck. You can’t buy it (not including that cereal with the leprechaun and the four-leaf clover charms), you can’t count on it and if you don’t have any, you can’t do anything about it. Much like late comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s take of going to casinos: “I don’t even know why I play blackjack. My lucky number is 22. But seriously…”

Exhibit A at this week’s PGA Championship is the leaderboard. Fourteen of the top 16 names on the board after 36 holes enjoyed the luck of the draw. They played Thursday morning when only a light breeze blew and the greens were fresh and Friday afternoon after winds that had gusted upwards of 35 mph in the morning and turned Southern Hills into a delightfully green fresh hell practically dropped dead on command. The players who caught the late-early draw must’ve felt like they got poked in eye with a sharp stick and poked in the stick with a sharp eye, which would probably also be unpleasant.

Remember Scottie Scheffler? He’s No. 1 in the world, your Masters champion and with four wins in two months the hottest player in the world? Scheffler went late-early. Missed the cut. Bad luck.

You know how tour players are. The guys on the short end here felt hosed while the guys who got the good break don’t think it was that big of a difference. The scoreboard says otherwise. Will Zalatoris shot a bogey-free 65, Chile’s Mito Pereira posted seven birdies en route to 66 and Bubba Watson, the two-time Masters champ, arose with nine birdies to shoot 63 and tie the PGA Championship 18-hole record. All early-late draws.

An obstinate, curmudgeonly journalist (I can’t think of one, though) might argue that Justin Thomas’ 67 in the teeth of Friday morning’s gale was a better round than any of the aforementioned.

“JT and Fitz (Matthew Fitzpatrick) played some pretty good golf in the conditions they faced,” said England’s Tyrrell Hatton, an early-late fellow who posted 70-68. “At the same time, we had tough conditions yesterday morning.

It wasn’t like it was a walk in the park then. Obviously, the back nine today was completely different because we really didn’t have the huge amount of wind so we definitely had the better side of the draw.”

Actually, the breeze was far stronger Thursday afternoon than Thursday morning, too, despite Hatton’s contention. The bottom line is, this PGA Championship’s outcome has already been partially determined by the weather. It happens. Remember the 2002 Open Championship at Muirfield in Scotland? Tiger Woods was on a roll, had already won the Masters and U.S. Open and was possibly headed for the third leg of the Grand Slam, two shots off the lead through 36 holes, until a freak storm blew in shortly before his afternoon tee time and crushed his portion of the field. Hence, his 70-68-81-65 line. Ernie Els was the winner, one of the few times he got the better of Woods. JT and Fitzy, some pretty good golf in the conditions they faced.

Pereira is a player many American fans are unfamiliar with. He is from Chile, he earned a battlefield promotion from the Korn Ferry Tour to the PGA Tour with three wins and in 2021, was part of that wild playoff for the bronze medal at the Olympic golf tournament. He didn’t get the medal, and neither did Rory McIlroy, by the way, but he has proven that he ranks among the tour’s better ballstrikers. Friday, he rolled putts in all day, usually not the strongest club in the bag. He was in the Early-Late Club, too.

“Yeah, it was lucky to get that draw,” Pereira said. “Sometimes you get the bad draw, sometimes the good one. But today, for sure, there was almost no wind on the back nine. Just lucky to have that draw.”

Zalatoris, a 25-year-old former Wake Forest University golfer who broke to prominence when he finished runner-up in last year’s Masters Tournament, grew up in Texas and wasn’t worried about Friday’s wind. He checked the forecast and saw that it would be bad in the morning but fade later. “I didn’t think it was going to calm down this much,” he admitted. “A day like this afternoon is pretty rare for us, to be honest.”

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain… well, it usually blows hard all day. It’s not done yet, either. There is a chance of rain on the weekend, considerably cooler temperatures and more wind from the north/northwest bringing the colder air.

It wasn’t just the wind that affected the leaders. Due to temperatures in the 90s, the greens had to be kept watered and were a little softer, noticeably so on Thursday. And the chance of high wind meant the PGA of America had to err on the side of caution and keep the greens a little slower so a big gust wouldn’t move golf balls on the greens.

So you had slower, softer greens, which aided players who maybe aren’t in the top echelon of fast-green putters. Those who conquer Augusta National’s treacherous slopes, for instance, had to seriously adapt to these slower surfaces.

Take a look at the board and compare it to the tour’s putting stats. This top 10 are not the tour’s top putters. But the greens, which were not mowed Friday in expectation of winds near 40 mph, will likely be double cut and rolled for the weekend, the wind will switch direction, the temperature will drop by more than 20 degrees—hey, this is going to feel like a completely different golf tournament.

Zalatoris ranks with the tour’s best iron players but he struggles with the putter at times. He wasn’t sure if the slower speeds helped him or not. “It was interesting,” he said. “They put some pins on a little more severe slopes than yesterday. It allowed us to be aggressive going back uphill but at the same time, I left plenty of 15-footers uphill short because I couldn’t believe they were that slow.”

Easier conditions didn’t mean lower scores automatically. Rory McIlroy shot 65 in the opening round, a performance that Golf Channel’s David Duval called “majestic.” No argument there. Friday, McIlroy bogeyed the second hole, kept finding the rough off the tee and didn’t give himself many good birdie chances. His 71 featured two bogeys and only one birdie. McIlroy was early-late and took advantage Thursday but missed a great opportunity Friday. Still, he is tied for fifth with Abraham Ancer and Davis Riley, only five behind Zalatoris with 36 holes left.

There’s plenty of golf left and plenty of wind. There’s also plenty of luck left… but for whom?

More PGA Championship Coverage from Morning Read

> Round 2 Scores, Updates from Southern Hills
> World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler a Surprise Missed Cut
> Fighting Through Pain to Make Cut in Another Major, Tiger Woods Can Smile
> Out of Nowhere, Bubba Watson Shoots 63 to Tie PGA Championship Record
> A Relaxed Justin Thomas Appears on ESPN's 'MegaCast' While Leading PGA
> What to Watch in Round 3: Newcomers, Justin Thomas' Second Job and Playing Through the Pain
> Matt Fitzpatrick Changing His Major Championship Luck
> Justin Thomas, No Longer Doubting, Shoots Second 67 at PGA
> Round 2 PGA Notes: Aaron Wise Beaned, Stewart Cink Rising, Bunker Complaints

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