LAKE FOREST, Ill. – On a day where winds swirled throughout Conway Farms Golf Club, Brandt Snedeker was pretty pleased with his second-round effort at the BMW Championship, a 3-under 68 that kept his name at the top of the leaderboard.
That is, until he saw Jim Furyk’s score.
“How Jim is doing what he’s doing out there, I have no idea,” said Snedeker, who now shares the lead with Furyk after the former U.S. Open champion became just the sixth player in PGA Tour history to shoot a 59. “On 18 I saw a Jumbotron that he needed a birdie on the last hole to shoot 59, and I thought, ‘What the heck, are you serious?’ There’s no way.”
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The stats back up Snedeker’s assessment, as the field of 70 of the world’s best played to a stroke average of just over 71 shots during the second round. Furyk’s round aside, Snedeker is satisfied with his position at the halfway point as he eyes raising the FedEx Cup for the second consecutive year next week at East Lake.
“Besides two loose drives, I thought I hit the ball pretty well. It was a tough day,” noted Snedeker, who has needed just 48 putts to complete 36 holes at Conway Farms. “To go out there and shoot a round like I did today is a really good thing, and it gives me a lot of momentum going into the weekend.”
With he and Furyk now three shots clear of their nearest competitor, Snedeker remains focused on accruing valuable points in advance of the final reshuffle heading into the Tour Championship. His mood in the media center was dampened somewhat further, though, when he found out that the man with whom he now shares the lead shot golf’s magic number despite a three-putt bogey on the fifth (his 14th) hole.
“That makes me feel depressed about my round,” Snedeker said wryly. “I was actually feeling pretty good about it walking up here.”
With much of the attention gravitating to Furyk in the aftermath of Friday’s record-tying round, Snedeker was quick to put some of the focus back on the 72-hole event as a whole, a tournament he still has plans to win.
“I guess my job now is to make sure that everybody forgets about it by Sunday,” he added.
