Palm Beach Gardens, Florida – Jake Knapp, who was 11 shots away from his opening shot at the Cognitive Classic, remains ahead, iced a 15-foot birdie in the last hole on Friday, under one 70 and scored a shot on Matthieu Pavon.
Knapp, who ranked 15th round 15 on the PGA Tour on Thursday, played 10 holes without birdies. He has a double wave when his t-shirt shoots to find the water. One of his better shots hit the sprinkler cap and bounced for 40 yards.
Knapp is not sure what will happen. One day, it was almost perfect, and the next day struggled.
“I never followed up 59 times in the game. It’s brand new to me,” Knapp said. “Yesterday, everything was clicking on the wisdom of hitting the ball, the distance control felt really good, able to control the flight and the windows. Everything was perfect.”
PGA National has more winds. The putter in the center of the cup managed to burn the edge.
“Several arbitrary shots, but nothing is too worrying,” he said.
One player had reason to celebrate, and shed some tears at the same time. Florida State junior Luke Clanton made an easy qualifying move with a 66-down five-shot – he was only four-shot – and the 21-year-old gave him enough points after the NCAA Championship in late May.
Clanton already has two runner-ups in the PGA Tour and other top ten. He is used to the big stage and he has another chance this weekend.
This is also true for many others.
Knapp is under 13 years old. Pavon, a Frenchman, won the 64-year-old lead last year at Torrey Pines until he barely missed a birdie in his last hole to end a birdie.
Daniel Berger, who grew up near PGA National, went out to share the lead at the age of 31 and did not create another bird for the rest of the process. He fell down with bogey, where he dug a shot from the dirt and weeded in 11th place and limited the damage very well.
Berger’s 68-year-old, better than Michael Kim (66), Doug Ghim (63) and Jesper Svensson (67), is a rookie who won his cards through the European Tour last year.
“I lost a little motivation in the last nine games,” Berger said. “I don’t know if I didn’t eat enough food and started feeling a little uncomfortable there. But, hit a bad 9 iron and inserted it into danger, and actually, I ran away just to spread the taboos there.”
Former Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson showed enough games at the age of 49 and joined Rickie Fowler (68) and Taylor Montgomery at the age of 132.
Jordan Spieth was right next to them, wrapping a 50-foot birdie putt on the 16th hole. But the day after he used all three holes of the “bear trap” bird, let him have lunch on the 3rd hole 17.
Spieth shot his tee into danger. His 25-foot par putt floated 4 feet through the hole and he missed the comeback to make a triple bogey. A birdie on the 18th gave him 70, but he was six shots behind the weekend.
After Bay Hill’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, Spieth added a cognitive classic to his schedule for the first time, opting not to award sponsor waivers to three-time Grand Slam champions, rather than Min Woo Lee, Minkenzie Hughes and Rafael Campos.
Knapp opened with a birdie after round 59 – he started in the 10th hole of the 5th – and then became quiet. He made a taboo from the bunker on the 16th. He found a bunker on his 5th 18-shot T-shirt, which prevented him from dividing the green into one point.
It seems that one day everything plotted against him on the third of five-shot 5, and his second shot happened to be green, hit the sprinkler cap and hit about 40 yards near the ninth tee. He played well for the birdie, and then the birdie was back on track until his tee shot found water on 4 4 poles.
“Obviously, today isn’t that good,” he said. “I’ll go out and practice a little bit and make sure I cleaned up some things. But, for the most part, you can’t really overuse it in this course.
