Golf
Lydia Ko is in total control at the halfway mark of the CME Group Tour Championship.
Total control of the season-long scoring and money races, too.
Ko shot a 6-under 66 in Friday’s second round of the LPGA Tour’s season finale, pushing her to 13 under for the tournament and five shots clear of Hyo Joo Kim through 36 holes.
Ko made four birdies in a six-hole stretch midway through her round, rolled in a testy 4-footer to save par on the par-4 13th to maintain what was then a four-shot lead, and hasn’t dropped a shot since her opening hole on Thursday.
“I just wanted to focus on my game,” said Ko, who turned a one-shot lead entering Friday to a five-shot edge when it was over. “It was a pretty tight leaderboard. I shot a low one yesterday and that round, it can be anybody throughout the week.”
Except right now, it’s not anybody else going as low as Ko has.
Her flawless round capped a big day for the LPGA, which unveiled its 2023 schedule with a record-setting $101.4 million in purses earlier Friday.
Ko’s 66 was the best score of the day; four other players shot 67’s. Through two rounds at Tiburon, there have been four scores of 66 or lower; Ko has two of them after an opening 65 on Thursday.
Kim (69) made back-to-back birdies on 16 and 17 to get to 8 under, alone in second. World No. 1 Nelly Korda (69) is in a pack tied for third at 7 under, along with Japan’s Nasa Hataoka (67), Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist (69) and Scotland’s Gemma Dryburgh (70).
Higgs shares lead at Sea Island: Harry Higgs lost his full PGA Tour card toward the end of last season and took a step Friday at Sea Island toward getting it back.
Higgs played bogey-free on the more difficult Seaside course for a 7-under 63, giving him a share of the lead with recent Texas grad Cole Hammer and Andrew Putnam going into the week of the RSM Classic.
Even without anyone from the top 20 in the world at Sea Island, plenty is at stake in the final official PGA Tour event before a six-week break to end the year.
Hammer, who had a 66 at Seaside, is playing on a sponsor exemption and has no full status on any tour.
Putnam, whose only PGA Tour title was in 2018, had a 65 on the Plantation course. He is playing for the eighth time in 10 weeks, having missed only the Bermuda Championship in the fall because he’s made every cut – he was a runner-up in Japan – and because the weather isn’t all that great at home near Seattle.
Higgs is an everyman, popular among his peers, and it stung to finish last season the way he did. After he tied for 14th in his Masters debut, Higgs missed the cut in 10 of his last 14 events to finish out of the top 125 in the FedEx Cup. He went to the Korn Ferry Tour Finals and missed the cut in all three of those tournaments.
Now he has conditional status, and this presents a great opportunity. Job security can be stressful on the PGA Tour, especially going into a season in which only 70 will qualify for the lucrative postseason.
“It’s in the back of your mind. It always is for almost everybody except for some of the top players in the world,” Higgs said. “But it can motivate you to work a little bit harder, make better decisions. The goal is to not really have to worry about it come March or as early as possible, right?”
The leaders were at 12-under 130.
Joel Dahmen (64 on Plantation), Beau Hossler (67 on Plantation) and Sahith Theegala, who matched Higgs with a 63 on Seaside, were one shot behind