PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Daniel Berger no longer needs to answer questions about how his back is feeling. The scorecard is telling the story.
Berger — playing what amounts to a home tournament for him, with his residence a 15-minute drive away in Jupiter — was the early leader through two rounds of the Honda Classic, after shooting a second consecutive 65 on Friday to move clear of the field before the afternoon wave of players took the course.
“You get your mom’s cooking, you get to sleep in your own bed,” Berger said. “It’s pretty comfortable.”
Chris Kirk also made an early move on Friday, with his round of 68 getting him to 7 under for the week and three shots off Berger’s pace.
Berger’s 10-under 130 is tied for the third-lowest score through 36 holes since the Honda moved to PGA National in 2007; Aaron Wise was 12 under through two rounds last year, Rory McIlroy was 11 under at the midway point in 2014 and Brendon De Jonge was 10 under that same year.
Full-field scores from The Honda Classic
That said, Berger is showing no signs of trouble so far this week. And Honda just suits him; he’s had a pair of top-five finishes here in six previous starts, including finishing second to Padraig Harrington in a Monday playoff to decide the winner in 2015.
“Every tournament I play in I want to win,” Berger said. “But it would be especially nice to win here having so many friends and family here with me this week. But you just can’t focus on that. You’ve just got to take it a shot at a time and really just stay patient because it is such a challenging golf course.”
Berger had a five-birdie, zero-bogey opening round on Thursday and was nearly as flawless on Friday, with six birdies and one bogey. The only stroke he gave back was on the par-3 15th, his sixth hole of the day, when his tee ball landed in a bunker and he wound up missing a 15-foot par putt.
If his lead holds — and with PGA National’s traditional wind expected to pick up in the afternoon, it certainly might — it would be Berger’s first 36-hole lead in a PGA Tour event since the Travelers Championship in August 2016. He is a four-time winner on tour, most recently at Pebble Beach in 2021.
But the back issues that flared up in recent weeks kept him from playing Pebble this year and defending that title. He played the Phoenix Open two weeks ago, testing his back and declaring afterward that he would be good to play at PGA National — a place where he played a ton of junior golf — and get a home week at the Honda.
So far, so good. Very good, in fact.
“It took actually longer than I thought it was to feel better,” Berger said. “Six, seven years ago I felt like I could have broken my ankle and 10 days later I would have been fine. But I’m getting older now and even at 28 I don’t feel the way I used to feel, shockingly, but that’s thousands and thousands of golf swings later, so it’s just part of the job.”
Among those going off in the afternoon wave Friday were first-round leader Kurt Kitayama, who was 6 under in Round 1, and another Honda fan favorite and South Florida native, Brooks Koepka.
DIVOTS: Louis Oosthuizen, the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 13 in the world, rallied for a 65 on Friday — 10 shots better than his opening round — and got to even-par 140. He started on the back side, made a double-bogey 6 on his second hole (the par-4 11th) to move to 7 over, then had seven birdies and nine pars the rest of the way. … Doug Ghim had five consecutive 5s on the front side. Problem was, three of those holes were par-4s and one was a par-3. He shot 77. … Defending champion Matt Jones struggled again, shooting 74 and ensuring he’d miss the weekend at 7 over.
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