KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C.—As grouchy as Vijay Singh was yesterday, you would have never known he posted the day’s best round, a 3-under par 69 that earned him a share of the lead heading into the third round of the 94th PGA Championship.
“If you had a golf course like this and you asked me to go and play golf in windy conditions, I’d say, ‘No, I’m not going to play,’” Singh said after surviving a windy day on the Ocean Course to stand 4-under par for the tournament. “I guess nobody is going to go out and play in conditions like this. But it is a major and we have to go out there and just struggle and manage yourself the best you can, I guess.”
You would think Singh would be a bit happier about a round in which he had just two bogeys while earning five birdies. It earned him a share of the lead with Tiger Woods and Sweden’s Carl Pettersson.
“I just never thought about the score,” Singh said. “I just kept adding it up each hole and trying to make my pars on every hole. That was the key. I just tried to make pars, miss it in the correct spot if I was out of position and be very strong with the longer putts. The lag putts were so key, not to leave myself four and five-footers.”
Singh, 49, won the PGA Championship in 1998 and 2004, but has missed the cut in four of the last six years and hasn’t won a PGA Tour event since 2008. But he came here encouraged after a tie for ninth at the British Open and a tie for seventh at the Canadian Open.
“I’ve been telling myself I’m swinging the club really well, but nothing is going,” he said. “All of a sudden it clicked, and it clicked at the British. I’ve been playing well for a while. It’s just the last two weeks were great and so far it’s been unbelievable.”
Nonetheless, Singh doesn’t seem to be a fan of the Ocean Course.
“If it blows this hard, I don’t’ think we can handle this golf course,” he said. “Yeah, I shot 69, but if I had to go out there and play again, I don’t know what I’m going to shoot. This is a difficult golf course in windy conditions like this.”