While the world’s number one was doing number one things on Friday, Christiaan Bezuidenhout quietly inserted himself into the conversation with a five-under-par 67 in the second round of the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament.
Bezuidenhout’s low round of the day took him to five-under for the tournament through 36 holes, and put him in a share of fourth at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. That was four strokes behind Scottie Scheffler’s 36-hole total of nine-under-par after his second round of four-under-par 68 took him three strokes clear of Canada’s Adam Hadwin and Norway’s Viktor Hovland in second. Bezuidenhout shared fourth with Keegan Bradley of the United States, and Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg was in sixth on four-under.
Bezuidenhout opened with two birdies on the first two holes, and he picked up two more ahead of the turn on five and nine. He dropped a shot on the 12th, but regained that lost shot with a birdie on the 13th. He picked up one more shot on the 15th to round off his scoring.
The Memorial is the seventh of eight Signature Events this season, and one of the three tournaments with player hosts – the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, The Genesis Invitational (Tiger Woods) and the Memorial (Jack Nicklaus) – to have a 36-hole cut to the top 50 and ties as well as any player within 10 strokes of the lead.
That sent home 22 players, a list that includes Jordan Spieth, US Open champion Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay and Rickie Fowler, who had to play the final eight holes in even-par to post an 82.
