3M Open: Taylor Pendrith’s exceptional play retains his scorecard clear

For the second day in a row, Taylor Pendrith saved his scorecard flawless. He fired off a 7-under 64 Friday to take a seat at 12-under general and lead by two at the 3M Open.

In spherical 1, the Canadian golfer shot a bogey-free 5-under 66. He has not dropped a single shot in 36 holes. Pendrith was one in every of three gamers who shot 64s in Spherical 2 of the 3M Open.

The 33-year-old completed T5 final week in Lake Tahoe on the Barracuda Championship, and the robust play adopted him to TPC Twin Cities.

“As we speak was fairly tough with the wind, blowing fairly laborious at instances, so my velocity was nice all day, and I stayed affected person,” Pendrith mentioned after his spherical Friday. “I didn’t have many attractiveness by way of the primary hour — Was in a position to keep affected person and make a pair longer ones, which was good.”

He thrived the primary two days of play, whereas many gamers recorded excessive numbers. For the previous Kent State golfer, it got here right down to a key factor he did proper.

“I hit quite a lot of greens,” he mentioned. “As we speak particularly I really feel like I had some in-between numbers and selected the sensible membership and hit it to 40 toes and took my two-putt, take my drugs. Then hit quite a lot of actually high quality photographs and was in a position to make some birdies.

“Yeah, driving the ball in play right here is vital. Hitting the greens — they’re pretty massive, so that you do need to have good velocity on the greens, however I’ve been in a position to do all three of these.”

Photograph by David Berding/Getty Photographs

Pendrith hit 16-of-18 greens in regulation on Friday and made 145 toes of putts. He’s No. 3 in strokes gained placing (+3.757), seventh off the tee (+1.510) and tied on the prime in strokes gained complete (+7.054).

The 33-year-old received the CJ CUP Byron Nelson in Could and mentioned it was an enormous confidence increase. Since that victory, Pendrith has two top-10s and 5 top-25s.

“I felt like I had been taking part in some good golf this 12 months, so to lastly get that finished felt superior,” Pendrith mentioned. “Hopefully draw on these experiences the subsequent two days and be in competition on Sunday, that might be nice, and have an opportunity to win. Simply targeted on tomorrow’s spherical and hold doing what I’ve been doing.”

Pendrith at the moment sits in twenty ninth place within the FedEx Cup standings, so a win right here might be a large bounce for him.

A win right here would give him 500 FedEx Cup factors and transfer his complete to 1,714. He may transfer up from twenty ninth to thirteenth, securing his spot in Atlanta.

He may have a late tee time on Saturday as Pendrith appears to be like to safe his second win of the season and turn into the sixth participant to win at the least twice in 2024.

Savannah Leigh Richardson is a golf workers author for SB Nation’s Enjoying By way of. For extra golf protection, comply with us @_PlayingThrough on all main social platforms. You may as well comply with her on Twitter @SportsGirlSL and Instagram @golf_girl_sl.