Fleetwood gets his golf groove going at PGA Championship

[SAN FRANCISCO] England's Tommy Fleetwood found his groove at the PGA Championship on Friday, shooting a blistering six-under-64 to tie for the lowest round of the tournament.

Mr Fleetwood shook off the rust of a 14-day quarantine to vault into contention at the halfway stage of the first major championship of the season in San Francisco.

"It's funny really, when you've played poorly, you feel a long way off, and then you have a day like today and you obviously feel a lot better about it. ... This week I felt way more in the groove of tournament golf," said Mr Fleetwood, who shot 70 on Thursday.

Starting on the 10th hole, the 29-year-old had seven birdies in the second round including four in a six hole stretch beginning on No 14 at the TPC Harding Park.

He is at six-under 134 heading into the weekend and near the top of a crowded leaderboard with many big names like Jason Day and Brooks Koepka.

"We played in tough conditions yesterday afternoon," said Mr Fleetwood. "But today I drove it really well. If you put it in the fairway around here it makes a massive, massive difference.

"I really didn't give many shots away. Made a poor-ish bogey from two 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. That's obviously why you shoot six-under."

Mr Fleetwood, of Southport, struggled in his first two PGA starts after undergoing a four-month break because of the coronavirus pandemic. He then did two weeks of travel quarantine upon arriving in America from his native England.

"I was leaving it as late as possible to start playing just because then it would be a straight stretch in America," he said. "For me being over here, it's obviously a very difficult situation the way the world is at the moment, but I think the Tour have done an amazing job in making it as safe as possible."

Several Europeans decided not to travel to the US because global pandemic is still raging throughout the country with over 160,000 deaths and counting. The PGA is being contested without spectators.

"People can only make their own decisions, and like I said, there's no right or wrong," Mr Fleetwood said.

He is seeking his first major championship and is the highest ranked player (13th) not to have won an event on US soil.

AFP