Tim Petrovic fired a 66 and New Zealand’s Steven Alker posted a 67 to join Ricardo Gonzalez of Argentina for the 36-hole lead at the Kaulig Companies Championship, the third major of the PGA Tour Champions season, on Friday in Akron, Ohio.
Gonzalez was a first-round co-leader and shot 68 on Friday to stay in contention. The leading trio is 5-under-par 135 after two rounds, one ahead of Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez, whose 66 Friday brought him to 4 under. Sweden’s Freddie Jacobson (67) is alone in fifth at 3 under.
Petrovic balanced seven birdies against three bogeys Friday at Firestone Country Club, finishing by rolling in a birdie putt at the par-4 ninth to grab his share of the lead.
Petrovic, 58, is the surprise of the week thus far. He has yet to win on the PGA Tour Champions and entered the week a pedestrian 38th in the Charles Schwab Cup standings.
“I’ve been hitting it well the last few weeks and I just haven’t had much to show for it because I haven’t really had many putts,” Petrovic said. “Then made a couple long putts early, I’m like, ‘Oh, wait a second, maybe we’ve got something going here.'”
Alker, the 2022 and 2024 Schwab Cup winner, is hunting for his second senior major championship. He birdied four of his first six holes Friday before dropping off a bit, with two bogeys and a birdie the rest of the way.
“If you get a good start around this golf course you kind of don’t have to be as aggressive as you normally would be,” Alker said. “Yeah, just pleased to get under par again out here.”
One of the rounds of the day belonged to Jimenez, the current Schwab Cup leader with three wins under his belt already in 2025.
He was 5 under par through 16 holes before taking his only bogey of the round at No. 17. If not for that bogey, he’d be part of the tie at the top.
“You need to have a lot of patience here,” Jimenez said of Firestone. “It’s a golf course that you have a couple slopes in the fairway, 4, 8, 9 … It’s a very fair golf course overall. You need to hit good, here is no luck, you need to hit good to score well.”
Angel Cabrera of Argentina, the PGA Tour Champions newcomer who won the first two majors of the season, is not far behind at 1 under after shooting 68 Friday.
–Field Level Media
