PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Kyle Westmoreland said he wouldn’t have reached the PGA Tour if it had not been for his years at the Air Force Academy and subsequent military service.
But he said he might have strayed a bit from that kind of mental and physical rigor in the past year and wants to regain that kind of focus.
Westmoreland looked focused enough on the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley Course on Friday when he birdied five of his eight holes and went on to shoot the day’s low round of 64 on that course to grab a share of the 36-hole lead in the PGA Tour Q-School at 7-under 133.
Westmoreland is tied with Harrison Endycott (68, Sawgrass Country Club) and Blaine Hale Jr. (66, Sawgrass). The trio is one shot ahead of PGA Tour veteran Harry Higgs (65, Sawgrass) and Trace Crowe (65, Sawgrass).
Going low with nothing to lose.
With conditional status already locked in, @HarryHiggs1991 can only improve his status with a top-5 finish.
He’s currently T4 after a strong round at Sawgrass Country Club. pic.twitter.com/kbNkprVMcc
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) December 15, 2023
Tied at 5 under are Keita Nakajima of Japan (66, Sawgrass), who is the highest-ranked player in the world in the field at No. 90, Brandon Harkins (66, Valley) and Hayden Spring (69, Sawgrass).
Higgs and Harkins had bogey-free rounds.
Raul Pereda had a bogey-free 67 at the Valley, and DP World Tour winner Julian Suri, matched that 67 at the Valley. The two are tied for 15th.
Third round will begin early; Monday finish possible
The remaining field of 159 players (there have been six withdrawals) will start an hour early at 7:30 a.m. ET on Saturday to try to beat a line of severe weather predicted to sweep through the area late Saturday afternoon and into the night.
There are predictions of 2-4 inches of rain and wind gusts as high as 50 mph, leaving the timing of Sunday’s final round in doubt. The Tour is prepared to finish the tournament on Monday.
In the meantime, players took advantage of slightly calmer winds on both courses in the second round. The field averaged 69.873 on the Valley Course, more than a shot less than the first round, and knocked almost three shots off the average Sawgrass score, going from 73.099 to 70.122.
“There’s still some wind out there,” said Westmoreland, who made a series of putts of 15 feet or less on the front, until capping his run with a 40-footer at No. 8. “Especially here [at the Valley] you get in the trees and it swirls a little bit. My caddie did a great job of trying to work through those numbers and trying to take as much risk out of it. There’s really good tee shots out here, so I played some good golf and made a few putts.”
Westmoreland, a native of Katy, Texas, qualified for the PGA Tour off his 2022-23 Korn Ferry Tour finish, becoming the second service academy graduate to earn a PGA Tour card following Billy Hurley (U.S. Naval Academy). Westmoreland eventually rose the the rank of captain and taught “Combative” at the Academy, which he said invovled boxing and basic grappling.
“A glorified PE teacher,” he said.
Tom Whitney (Air Force) became the third by finishing 21st on this year’s Korn Ferry Tour points list.
Westmoreland admits he needs better focus. He got 32 starts this season but made only 10 cuts and finished 192nd on the FedEx Cup Fall points list.
“You learn how to prepare. You learn how to be disciplined in kind of what you’re going about doing,” he said of what his USAF Academy experience taught him. “To be honest, I’ve fallen short a little bit this year, kind of getting outside of my preparation, how I do things. We’re really just trying to focus on going back to that. Prepare, really focus on doing the things that are going to make me better throughout the week. I’m so thankful for my service time. I wouldn’t be here without it. But I can always get better.”
Hale, who played college golf at Oklahoma, needs every bit of status he can muster because he’s one of the players in the field who is starting from ground zero. He has advanced through first- and second-stage qualifying and made just more than $5,000 after making a single Korn Ferry Tour cut last season.
“I’ve done about all I can to be in this position,” he said. “Just keep putting the ball in front of me and keep going the next couple days. It’s just validation. It’s validation that I was doing the right thing, validation that I’ve been practicing the right way.”
Hale was 5 under for the day through 12 holes, stumbled with a pair of late bogeys but righted himself with a closing birdie at the difficult ninth hole at Sawgrass.
Endycott, an Australian who had the only bogey-free round Thursday on either course, finally made one at the 18th hole at Sawgrass after 26 in a row without a blemish.
He turned and was 1 under with no further damage on the front nine.
Other assorted Q-School highlights and lowlights
Spencer Levin shot a bogey-free 64 for the low round at Sawgrass and is tied for ninth at 4-under.
Wesley Bryan birdied four holes in a row on the back nine of the Valley, made a quadruple-bogey 8 at No. 17, then birdied four of his first five holes on the front nine for a 66. He’s also tied for ninth.
66 with a quadruple bogey
@WesleyBryanGolf moves to T9 after a wild round at PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry. pic.twitter.com/Tjxnk0WPj4
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) December 15, 2023
Tano Goya, who was tied for the first-round lead with Endycott, was 5-under to start his Sawgrass round and lost all five shots by the turn, ending with a double-bogey at No. 9. He then played the back nine clean with three birdies for a 72.
Daniel Summerhays had a bogey-free 65 at the Valley and Rob Oppenheim had eight scores of 2 or 3 for a 65 at the Valley as they both moved into a tie for 15th.
Erik Compton birdied four of his first five holes at Sawgrass, and then birdied his first three holes on the back nine. But he had double-bogeys at Nos. 8 and 18 for a 68 and a tie for 30th at 2-under.
Dillon Board, who went to high school nearby, shot 82 in the first round at Sawgrass and knocked 12 shots off with a 70 at the Valley. He’s still got a long way to climb because he rose only six spots to 157th.
But the biggest mover up the leaderboard was by Aldrich Potgieter, a 19-year-old South African and the youngest player in the field by 3 years, 2 months, and 4 days, shaved 15 shots off his 8-over 78 at Sawgrass Country Club with 7-under 63 at the Valley, the lowest round of the week on that course. He went from a tie for 156th to a tie for 61st, up 95 spots.
The top five finishers of the Q-School tournament will earn a 2024 PGA Tour card.
The WDs
The six players to withdraw so far are Kevin Chappell, Scott Piercy, Sam Choi, Zach Bauchou, Fabian Gomez and Brent Grant. Chappell, Piercy and Choi did so during the second round.