COLORADO SPRINGS, CO — Padraig Harrington and Stewart Sink have beenaring the ups and downs of the US Senior Open for the second day in a row on Friday and found themselves tied to the lead.
Payoffs – Share your final tee time and start the weekend with Broadmoor, which is hard to read.
Cink scored five shots on the final nine holes of head-to-head pairing with Harrington, and players headed for the weekend tied to a 6-under 134, retreating Mark Hensby.
Cink shot 31 on the front nine of the second nine to match Harrington’s score at the back.
Both players – The two, who averaged over 300 yards with 50 PGA Tour champions, averaged over 300 yards, called a comfortable pairing, especially on altitude hilly courses where measurement distances are not routine.
“If anything, he’ll be a little longer than me,” Harrington said. “But I know enough about his game so I think I can see what’s going on. He’s definitely the partner I choose to play.”
Hensby shot his second straight round of 3-under 67, finishing the day with his 14th and 15th birdie tournaments. This included 20 footers from nearby as the tee shot didn’t hit Doug Baron’s ball on the green. Hensby was 9 under par on the front nine and 3 under at the back two days later.
“This is good around here because you make a lot of birdies,” he said.
The three were followed by Thomas Bjorn (69), followed by Ye Yang (68) and Billy Andrede (69) at 2 under.
At 1 under, Darren Clark, Steve Fresh, Miguel Angel Gimenez – the round included 18 approaches closer to the driving range than the fairway and a double hit from the second rough (no penalty for that).
Cink hit all 18 greens under regulations, reaching 35 out of 36 that week. He called it an overestimation of the statistics, especially on the course that begins with the infamous, hard-to-read greens that can’t leave the monument lurking above the Cheyenne course.
“I don’t want to cut downhill on this course, that’s no secret,” said Sink, 52, the 2009 British Open champion who plays at his first US Senior Open.
Cink is the best tournament ever, with a 9th 45 feet to 2 putts and a fifth birdie on the front and a 66 score.
After Harrington shot a 31 on a more difficult back nine and then kept the lead with five on a birdie on a third of par 5, he thought he might have an opportunity to open a big lead towards the weekend.
A pair of three putts – one produced a bogey on the par 3 fourth green, one slowed down to hold back the severe slopes.
“I wanted to make more,” Harrington said. “I made a Miss Club at 15 to make a bogey, and then I’m in the front 9 where you obviously want to make some birdies. Nothing guaranteed.”
However, it worked well for the three-time major champion, winning the 2007, ’08 and 2008 PGA Championships. On the greenside bunker No. 9, Harrington made 20 footers for Birdie to pull onto the tie.
“I got some nice reads from Stewart. I don’t think I gave them that much break, so that was good,” said Harrington, who won the 2022 US Senior Open.
Among those who missed the cut were 12-time senior major champion Bernhardlanger, who shot a 77, and Angel Cabrera, who won the second major this year, who shot a 75.
David Toms, the champion who last came to Broadmoor in 2018, hit a five-foot approach for Birdie to cut the numbers.
But the headliner on Saturday was Harrington and Sink. The biggest meeting before this weekend could have been a 2002 Ryder Cup Four Thums match and another Four Ball contest in 2004 (Cink has both).
“I love watching him play and I hope he probably feels the same about me,” Sink said. “We respect each other. He’s a world class player and he’s been doing it for a long time. If I can go far here, I love it.”