Friday 8 March 2019 22:03, UK
Tommy Fleetwood was delighted to take advantage of the par-fives at Bay Hill after storming to the top of the leaderboard on day two of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Fleetwood admitted he "chopped it round" on Thursday and had to scramble hard to keep a bogey off his card in his opening three-birdie 69, but he was disappointed at failing to make a birdie on any of the four par-fives.
But it was a different story early on Friday as the Englishman played the long holes in six under, with two eagles and a pair of birdies, while two further birdies on the front nine offset bogeys at the second and 10th holes.
Having recovered from his early blemish with birdies at four and five, Fleetwood drilled a four-iron to 17 feet at the sixth and nailed the putt for eagle, and he repeated the feat at the 12th when he smote a stunning 275-yard fairway wood which set up his second eagle-three of the round from six feet.
Fleetwood just missed out on another at the 16th after another solid second to the heart of the green, and two good pars to finish capped a 66 which earned him the early clubhouse lead on nine-under par.
"When I come off yesterday, I was in the truck with my trainer and I said I could have played the par-fives a little better," he said. "I was level par for them yesterday and made a couple up-and-downs for that.
"So today I made a much better job of those. And you have to, on tough courses, if you can score on the par-fives, you can shoot a good score and that's basically where I made all my numbers up today.
"I've done a lot of good things over the last two or three years, so the next logical step is to win on the PGA Tour and then see where we go from there. I've got off to a pretty slow start to the year, so if I can just keep improving and keep doing the right things and focusing on myself, hopefully that will be the result of things."
Fleetwood led a strong English presence at the right end of the leaderboard with Eddie Pepperell (68), Matt Wallace (69) and Matt Fitzpatrick (70) all closing on four under at the halfway stage.
Pepperell, twice a winner on the European Tour last season, was unhappy with his swing during the first round and admitted to watching videos of himself, and Sergio Garcia, in his hotel room, doing swing drills at 2am, while he was also inspired by wearing a pair of Jack Nicklaus socks!
The charismatic 28-year-old started on the 10th and followed birdies at 12 and 14 with three in a row from the 16th to complete an impressive back-nine 31 and, although he was one over for the second half of his round, he was happy with his position going into the weekend.
"I've been playing bad and kind of had a couple of views of my swing in bed last night and thought 'what am I going to do today', and kind of went with that," he said. "I played really good, particularly with my irons, and then it was tough coming in.
"I actually started working with an old coach this week and I'm going to start working with two coaches moving forward because I feel like the one I worked with last year obviously has been valuable for me. But Mike (Walker), my old coach, I think is also very valuable to me.
"He's been great and I'm kind of trying to get back to some old feels and my iron play was particularly strong today. I know I can shoot good scores, like they come to me when my iron play has been good, but as of late my iron play has been so bad the game felt so tough."
But would Pepperell be spending the afternoon on the practice range? Or maybe on the putting green? Or would he be trying to catch up on the sleep he missed out on between rounds? The answer was an emphatic "no"!
"Me and my girlfriend are off to Harry Potter World," he said. "We were supposed to do it Wednesday and we didn't. So we're going to go this afternoon."
