For some 25 years, Stewart Cink and Padraig Harrington have been friends and rivals on the golf course, often getting paired up in some of the biggest championships.
At this week’s U.S. Senior Open Championship at The Broadmoor, the USGA grouped the former Open Championship winners with another champion of The R&A’s marquee competition, Justin Leonard.
As two of the senior circuit’s longest hitters, Cink and Harrington, the 2022 U.S. Senior Open champion, drafted off each other for the first two days, and after posting 36-hole totals of 6-under 134 to share the lead halfway through the 45th edition, the two will likely be seeing a lot more of each other over the weekend.
Harrington, who shared the first-round lead with Mark Hensby, carded a 3-under 67 for the second consecutive day, while Cink went one better with a 66, thanks to a second-nine run of five birdies over his last seven holes.
They are joined at 6-under 134 by first-round co-leader Mark Hensby, who continued his birdie barrage in registering a second consecutive 67.
That trio is three strokes clear of Thomas Bjorn (68-69—137) and four ahead of Billy Andrade (69-69—138) and 2009 PGA champion Y.E. Yang (68-70—138). Darren Clarke (71-68), who teamed with Bjorn to win the American Family Insurance Championship two weeks ago, Steve Flesch (69-70) and Miguel Angel Jimenez (69-70), the victor in last week’s senior major event in Akron, Ohio (Kraulig Companies Championship), are the only other players under par.
The cut came at 5-over 145 with 64 professionals qualifying for the weekend.
Cink, 52, of Atlanta, Ga., and Harrington, 53, of the Republic of Ireland, both finished before an early afternoon storm suspended play for 67 minutes.
“I would be shocked if there's anybody I've played more golf with in major championships than Padraig Harrington over my career, and it's probably by double the next guy,” said Cink, who won a memorable playoff over 59-year-old Tom Watson in 2009 at Royal Birkdale.
“I've always respected his game, and we're very good friends. It's a comfortable pairing. I love watching him play. I would hope that he probably feels similarly about me. We have mutual respect for each other. He's a world-class player and he's been doing it a long time. I would love it if we could go the distance here.”
On Friday, it was a tale of two nines. Starting on the more difficult back nine, it was Harrington who looked like he might produce a round in the low 60s. He carded a 3-under 31 with four birdies on a side that has statistically played 1.75 strokes higher. However, Harrington could only take advantage of the two par 5s – he made a 20-footer on No. 9 – on the outward nine, failing to get up and down for birdie after driving his ball into a greenside bunker on the 341-yard second, and registering a pair of three-putt bogeys on Nos. 4 and 7.
“The start I got this morning, I was hoping to go a little lower and maybe try and get away from the field,” said Harrington, a three-time major champion (two Open Championships and a PGA Championship). “As I said yesterday, most of Thursday and Friday is jockeying for position, keeping yourself in the tournament, trying not to lose the tournament. But after the start I had today, I could have got some daylight between myself and the field and got out there. I just have to go and do it all again the next two days.”
Seeing that Harrington was trying to separate himself from the field, Cink got out of neutral and into a higher gear after making the turn at 1-over 35 with his lone blemish a bogey on No. 14. The former Georgia Tech standout got things going with a two-putt birdie at the 600-yard, par-5 3rd and added another on the 164-yard, par-3 4th. He added birdies on 6, 8 and 9. Through 36 holes, his ball-striking has been impeccable. Cink hit 18 greens on Friday and leads the field in GIR (35 of 36).
“Nothing really that I can put a finger on,” said Cink when asked about his second-nine turnaround. “I just kept doing the same things I was doing and keeping the ball mostly in play, and if I was out of play, I was just in the rough. I never was in a lot of trouble. Then a couple putts went in, hit one close, two-putted [both] par 5s, and you look back and an hour and a half later you've got five birdies in the last seven holes or something.
“It was not like I dug deep and found anything I just kept doing the same thing and patience was rewarded.”
For a guy who has complained about consistency, Hensby has been a model of it – at least scoring wise – through two rounds.
The Australian, who turns 54 on Sunday, leads the field in birdies with 15. A day after making nine in a roller-coaster round that saw him register six bogeys and just three pars, Hensby, who finished third in this championship three years ago, continued his hot putting in Round 2, including an 18-foot birdie on No. 1 (his 10th of the day) and a challenging, left-to-right sliding 20-footer for birdie on the par-3 8th. And he nearly converted a 25-foot eagle putt on the par-5 9th to close out the day. Those last two birdies overcame two hiccups on Nos. 5 and 7.
That birdie got Hensby, who leads the field in putting with 1.54 per green, into a share of the lead, and into Saturday’s penultimate grouping with Bjorn.
There also were fewer outside distractions on Friday from what Hensby called overanxious TV cameramen “running up on me” while preparing to hit shots.
“I'm a fast player,” he explained. “I'm ready to go and then I have to back off because they ran to stick that mic pretty close. That happened three times [on Thursday]. That got a bit frustrating when my caddie (Austin Watson) had to keep telling them to stop it. But as I said, today we told them from the get-go, stand aside, and it was fine.
“[I] definitely played more steady today than I did yesterday, that's for sure.”
Notable
Six of the eight past champions in the field missed the cut: Bernhard Langer, Olin Browne, Jeff Maggert, Gene Sauers, Fred Funk and Brad Bryant, who at 70 years of age was the oldest competitor in the field. This is only the second time in 17 starts that Langer has failed to play the weekend (2022). David Toms, who won his title at The Broadmoor in 2018, made a 4-foot birdie putt on No. 18 to get inside the cutline.
Other notables to not play the weekend included 2007 U.S. Open champion Angel Cabrera, 2005 U.S. Open champion Michael Campbell, 2024 runner-up Hiroyuki Fujita and two-time U.S. Open champion Lee Janzen.
For the second consecutive year – and first time in championship history – no amateurs made the cut. The week started with 18 in the field. It is the fifth time since the championship’s inception in 1980 that not a single amateur will play the weekend.
Two more players made eagles on par 4s on Friday. Mikael Lundberg, the last player to register this week, holed out on No. 2, while Jeff Sluman made a 2 on the fifth hole.
Chris Devlin, of the Republic of Ireland, had an eight-stroke turnaround on Friday, carding a 3-under 67 to make the cut with a 2-over total of 142.
Scott Verplank withdrew after 13 holes on Friday due to an unspecified injury. Stuart Smith, a pro from Reno, Nev., also withdrew 15 holes into his second round with an unspecified injury.
Quotable
“This is the advantage of having a late-early tee time. I probably [have] got close to 24 hours before my next round, so it's time to rest and get your head in place because it's going to be a long weekend from now for sure. When you're at the top of the leaderboard all week, it's always a stressful week.” – Padraig Harrington
“It's a stat that shouldn't be, like, overvalued because these greens are pretty large and they're fairly receptive right now. They're just not that hard to hit, to be fair. I have hit some pretty average shots that have ended up on the green, and that counts just as much as hitting it to two feet.” – Stewart Cink on hitting 35 of 36 greens
“Padraig is one of the class players here, and he probably thinks that of me. We're probably where we ought to be as far as competing for this win. I mean, we played against each other in the Ryder Cup. That's like the pinnacle of competition. I don't even know if he got the better of me or if I got the better of him. All I know is I've watched him play a lot and I've listened to him talk a lot. He's just a great character, and I have just the highest respect for his game.” – Cink
“I haven't played well the last six weeks. Just came out here and said, ‘You know what? Let's just go play and not think about results and just have fun.’ This is a hard track. Hard track to walk. The greens are treacherous. This afternoon, obviously coming in, they get a little bumpy and they're hard to make putts. Going into the weekend I'm excited. I'm right there. That's all we want, especially at 61 years old.” – Billy Andrade
“Yesterday was a rough day for me. I really struggled with the pace of the greens. I was expecting the greens to be a lot faster than they were, and then the rain softened them up a little bit. I just left the ball in the wrong places in certain parts of the round and couldn't get any momentum going. It was good today to bounce back and get everything back where it's supposed to be.” – Chris Devlin on his eight-stroke improvement
“It was a bit rushed. They took us off the course for an hour and then gave us a text message to be in position in seven minutes while the other half of the draw is getting time to hit balls. So put that in the equation. It was a little weird. It cost Retief [Goosen], playing the last hole dead cold. We weren't in any rhythm. But now the course is still the same. It's pretty soft unfortunately. I'd like to see it a bit firmer.” – Ernie Els on the 67-minute delay
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