LOS ANGELES — Joaquin Niemann was playing so well and having so much fun doing it at Riviera that he didn’t want to stop. And then he picked up right where he left off Friday and shattered the 36-hole record in the Genesis Invitational.
His opening-round 63 still fresh in his mind, Niemann hit 6-iron to 4 feet for eagle on the first hole, followed with a birdie and wound up with another 63.
Niemann was at 16-under 126, which broke the previous record set about 20 minutes earlier by Cameron Young, a 24-year-old PGA Tour rookie who birdied his last four holes for a 62. Young was at 128, at least giving Niemann some company atop the leaderboard.
The previous mark before Friday was 130 by four players, most recently Sam Burns last year.
Among those who finished early Friday, next in line was Adam Scott, a two-time winner at Riviera. He was at 9-under 133 and felt he was doing everything right. He goes into the weekend needing to make up seven shots.
Full-field scores from The Genesis Invitational
“I’ve got a ton of ground to make up. It’s not like I’m even close at the moment,” Scott said.
Blame that on Niemann, the 23-year-old Chilean who feels right at home on Sunset Boulevard.
“We got it going pretty good at the beginning,” Niemann said. “I really like the way I handled myself out there.”
Scoring like this wasn’t expected at the start of the week, even with the warm sunshine and very little wind. Riviera has held up against the best in the world — and all the world’s best are here this week — longer than any other PGA Tour event.
The 72-hole record was set in 1985 by Lanny Wadkins at 20-under 264, and it’s the longest such record on the PGA Tour.
It might be time for Wadkins to start sweating. Niemann hit it close Thursday — all but one of his nine birdies was inside 10 feet — and Friday he holed four birdie putts from 15 feet or longer, including a bonus 40-footer on the 12th.
The field featured all 10 from the top 10 in the world and 19 of the top 25. Not all of them will be around for the weekend, starting with Dustin Johnson, who had to play bogey-free for a 31 on his final nine holes just to shoot par.
Johnson was the last player to challenge Wadkins’ scoring record. He had such a big lead in 2017 that he played it conservatively at the end. Plus, he didn’t know what the record was and didn’t particularly care.
Patrick Cantlay, who had a mathematical chance to reach No. 1 in the world by winning, had to make a pair of birdies late to salvage his round for the second straight day. He shot 72 and was on the bubble of making the cut.
Jon Rahm and Collin Morikawa, the Nos. 1 and 2 players in golf, played in the afternoon.
Young kept his from turning into an early runaway. He already has had a strong start to his rookie season by tying for second in the Sanderson Farms last fall.
He was having a nice round until finishing with four straight birdies, all inside 10 feet, a couple of them involving tough pins. The easiest shot was his 1-foot birdie putt on the ninth hole to cap off his 62.
The bonus was on No. 8, which has a split fairway divided by the barranca. That’s where Young went off the tee, and while he drew a decent lie, he was still hoping for the best.
“I was really just trying to hack it up on the front of the green and roll it up and it just came out really good. Came out more like a normal shot than I thought it might,” Young said of a shot that settled 8 feet from the pin. “For it to end up the right distance is honestly a little bit of blind luck, which doesn’t always happen. But today it did.”
Viktor Hovland had a 64 while sticking to his strategy from the U.S. Amateur at Riviera in 2017, taking it well right on No. 15 to the adjacent 17th fairway. He hasn’t hit his second shot closer than 60 feet either day, but he made par.
Hovland was at 7-under 135, along with Russell Knox, who had two eagles in the same round for the first time in his career and shot 67.
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