Talor Gooch shot his second straight round of 5-under-par 67 to join Peter Uihlein and Belgium’s Thomas Detry atop the leaderboard after the second round of LIV Golf Riyadh on Thursday in Saudi Arabia.
The trio is at 10-under 134 halfway through the event. Uihlein and LIV newcomer Detry were the first-round co-leaders but each shot a 69 on the second day.
Gooch rolled in four of his six birdies on the front nine and limited himself to a single bogey at Riyadh Golf Club.
“My intention is to play as good as I can,” Gooch said. “But I think if you were to tell me you would give me 67 every round and I don’t have to play, I would take it and just watch how the cards fall.”
Gooch is the new captain of Smash GC after the departure of Brooks Koepka to return the PGA Tour. Smash combined to score 20 under par on Thursday to move to 30 under for the event, a three-shot lead over Joaquin Niemann’s Torque GC.
Jason Kokrak turned in the round of the day, an 8-under 64, to bolster Smash’s total. That also put Kokrak at 9 under for the tournament, one off the pace and tied with Jon Rahm of Spain, Sebastian Munoz of Colombia and Elvis Smylie of Australia.
“Talor has been a great captain so far. Leads by example,” Kokrak said. “… I think the four of us are going to have a lot of fun this year.”
Uihlein, who picked up three of his birdies during a five-hole stretch at Nos. 13-17, has his sights set on the individual leaderboard as the top 10 finishers will collect Official World Golf Ranking points for the first time.
“Individual is the only thing I’ve got going for me,” said Uihlein, whose RangeGoats are in 11th place in the team competition. “… Now that we get world ranking points, you can jump up in the OWGR and try and get in the majors. That’s definitely the goal.
“Yeah, it would be awesome, right? There’s some unbelievable players out here, and to say you’ve won and beat them definitely would be pretty special.”
Detry is in a prime position to win his LIV Golf debut, a year to the week when he won on the PGA Tour for the first time at the 2025 WM Phoenix Open.
“I like to make statements, and especially my first sort of job, first week for me out here. There’s loads of different things,” Detry explained. “Again, I didn’t really know what to expect, how I was going to react to it, and I put a lot of hard work the last couple of weeks with my coach at home, and I feel like it’s all paying off, too.”
–Field Level Media
