FORT WORTH, Texas _ A second consecutive day marked by swirling wind gusts rearranged the names atop the leader board Friday at the Dean & DeLuca Invitational.
The golfers who set the pace after the opening round at Colonial Country Club yielded Saturday's late tee times to a fresh collection of front-runners: Webb Simpson, Kevin Kisner, Danny Lee and Scott Piercy.
All four head into the weekend rounds at 6-under par for the tournament, one stroke ahead of another four-player group that includes Masters champion Sergio Garcia, Jon Rahm, Paul Casey and Sean O'Hair.
That means the best scores on the board through 36 holes are only one stroke removed from the end of Thursday's round, when three players held the lead at 5-under. That illustrates the challenge of scoring conditions through two rounds at Colonial, where Friday's 36-hole cut of 4-over par (144) marked the highest at the tournament since 1999.
A total of 72 golfers will advance to the weekend rounds at a par-70 venue where Friday's scoring average ballooned to 71.74, raising the cumulative mark for two rounds to 71.65 for the 121 competitors. Bottom line: Colonial hasn't been this difficult for PGA Tour competitors through 36 holes in this century, a distinction that does not surprise Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open champion who posted a second-round 66 in the 25 mph winds.
"I thought anything under par was a great score," said Simpson, who considered his six-birdie, two-bogey round more like a 62 or 63 in normal conditions. "This golf course, with this wind, is so tricky."
But the course yielded Friday's 64 by Lee, the lowest round of tournament week. The Irving resident, who grew up in New Zealand, offset a lone bogey with seven birdies. Lee, who played in the afternoon, made birdies on five of final eight holes he played, including Nos. 16-18 to conclude his round.
"My ball-striking was on point. I felt like I could pull off any shot today," said Lee, who found 13 of 18 greens in regulation. "I had a strong finish, and that's exactly what I need to have good momentum carrying over the next couple of days."
Another player who left the course with momentum was defending champ Jordan Spieth. On pace to miss the cut after three bogeys in his first five holes, Spieth rallied to post a 68 and move to 2 under, four strokes off the lead. Spieth bagged birdies on five of the last 13 holes he played to secure weekend tee times after missing the cut in his last two events.
"That would have been really, really tough for me to swallow if I missed this cut," said Spieth, who has finished 14th or better in his four previous Colonial appearances, with last year's win and a runner-up finish in 2015. "It was in my head."
But not any more. Spieth will begin play Saturday in a tie for 11th and in pursuit of the leaders as well as a pair of high-profile Spaniards (Garcia, Rahm) who stand at 5 under and acknowledge that they benefited from playing the first 36 holes in the same group.
"To be honest, I think it helped a lot," said Rahm, 22, a PGA Tour rookie who grew up idolizing Garcia, 37. "When one of us was struggling, the other one had a good day. I think being happy for each other and pulling for each other, that's how our games ended up under par on a tough day."
Rahm said he is motivated by the fact that Garcia, at 21, won the 2001 Colonial title in his debut in Fort Worth. Rahm, a two-time winner of college golf's Ben Hogan Award (2015, 2016), hopes to follow suit in Sunday's conclusion of his Colonial debut.
"We both had two really good days in difficult conditions," said Garcia, who is playing at Colonial for the first time since 2012. "The course is not playing easy. If it doesn't rain, it's still going to be tough."
That should make for a dramatic weekend, which will begin with 15 players within four shots of the four golfers sharing the 36-hole lead.
A pair of Colleyville residents, Ryan Palmer and Chad Campbell, advanced to the weekend rounds with matching totals of 2 over. They are tied with Phil Mickelson, a two-time Colonial champ who backtracked with a second-round 75 in his first appearance in Fort Worth since 2010.
But with a crowded leader board, that threesome is only eight shots off the lead with 36 holes to play. Kisner, who has a share of the lead after matching rounds of 67-67, envisions the possibility of a wild finish.
"There's a bunch of guys within four shots," Kisner said. "You just never know on the PGA Tour. Guys don't ever quit making birdies."
But when the wind howls at Colonial, as it has done for the past two days, the pace of that birdie train tends to slow to a crawl.
