Armour, Clark share Bermuda lead
SOUTHAMPTON, Bermuda – Ryan Armour and Wyndham Clark survived ferocious wind Friday in the Bermuda Championship to share the lead going into a weekend that includes 64-yearold Fred Funk.
Armour could only guess where the 30 mph gusts would blow his golf ball across Port Royal. The 44-year-old from Ohio still managed three early birdies and another on the par-5 17th for a 1-under 70. Clark played in the afternoon and reached 10-under par until a pair of late bogeys for a 68.
They were at 8-under 134, one shot ahead of Kramer Hickok (68).
The big surprise was Funk, who only played because he had a chance to be paired with his son, Taylor, who played at Texas. Funk, whose last PGA Tour victory was in 2007 at the Mayakoba Classic, chipped in for birdie from the behind the ninth green for a 72, and his son was so excited he about knocked him to the ground in celebration.
“This guy is pretty damn good for an old guy,” said Taylor, who shot an 81, one of nine players who shot in the 80s on the windswept day in Bermuda.
“He fought back and he made the cut, and not many 64-year-olds can do that in the world,” he said. “It was fun to watch him play.”
Funk is the oldest player to make the cut on the PGA Tour since 65-year-old Tom Watson five years ago in the RBC Heritage at Hilton. The only other players 64 or older to make the cut since1970 were Jack Nicklaus and Sam Snead.
“And then Funk. You throw that in there, it doesn’t sound right, does it?” Fred Funk said. “I don’t know whether I compete, but making the cut was big.”
It wasn’t easy on a day like this, where the wind was so strong it was difficult to stand up, especially on some of the holes along the ocean.
“Today was really hard,” Armour said. “We didn’t know whether to say get up, get down, what to tell it. We couldn’t judge the distance very well and we had some balls going sideways out there and my ball doesn’t usually go sideways. And it would just get up in the wind and it would go 20 yards further left or right than you wanted it to.”
That made the performance by Clark even more remarkable, although the wind finally caught up with him when he took bogeys on the par-5 seventh and the par-3 eighth to fall back into a tie with Armour.
Champions Tour
BOCA RATON, Fla. – Playing his fourth event since revealing he’s fighting bladder cancer, John Daly shot an 8under 64 on Friday for a share of the lead with Jim Furyk in the PGA Tour Champions’ TimberTech Champions.
Daly had his lowest score in his fiveyear career on the 50-and-over tour. The two-time major champion won his lone Champions title in 2017 in Houston.
“Just tired all the time, just something the doc told me I’d be,” Daly said. “Trying to drink the right stuff, but it’s hard to take Diet Coke away from me. I was proud of myself, I only smoked six cigarettes today. Usually I smoke about a pack and a half.”
Daly eagled the par-5 18th – hitting a 7-iron to 12 feet – for a first-nine 31 on The Old Course at Broken Sound. He finished the round with a bogey on the par-4 ninth.
“I just hit it really good,” Daly said. “The bad drives that I did hit, I could find it, hit it. I just putted really, really good. … The putter felt really, really good today and these greens are so good, that if you get on a little roll, it helps. You could see by the scores, a lot of low scores today.”
The 50-year-old Furyk won this year in his first two starts on the senior tour.
He birdied the last two holes and three of the last four.
“Just trying to put the ball on the fairway, put the ball on the green, give myself some looks and probably did my best putting there on the back nine and knocked in some putts that had a little bit of length to them, 10, 15, 20 feet,” Furyk said.
Local favorite Bernhard Langer, the winner in 2010 and 2019, was a stroke back with Duffy Waldorf, Scott Parel and Robert Karlsson. Joe Durant and Brett Quigley shot 66,
“Finally made a few putts from medium distance or short distance,” the 63year-old Langer said. “Played pretty solid, maybe one loose drive here or there, but my irons were better today than most days.”