Saturday at the 101st PGA Championship wasn’t so much a “moving day” as it was a reshuffle of the leaderboard below Brooks Koepka.
The three-time major champion fired an even-par round of 70 at Bethpage State Park’s Black Course, but still maintained the same seven-stroke lead he began the day with as his nearest competitors fell down the leaderboard and no one else made a run.
En route to his 12-under par 36 and 54-hole total, Koepka was breaking records left and right — course records, major championship scoring records — apparently that destruction didn’t stop with the record books.
Playing his second hole on Saturday, Koepka had a short iron into the green. Sawing off a wedge, Koepka’s divot flew into the air momentarily confusing the telecast’s TopTracer technology that illustrates the flight pattern of the ball.
Brooks Koepka is breaking everything. ?♂️#PGAChamp | @BKoepka pic.twitter.com/GqgVmrDWnr
— PGA of America (@PGA) May 18, 2019
Gary McCord, who was on the call for CBS, was thrown off as the tracer took a quick right turn.
“Woah, woah, woah, woah,” he said. “TopTracer either broke or… well, that turned out nice.”
Koepka would go on to birdie the hole en route to an outgoing 1-under par 34. He would make two bogeys coming in, slightly offset by a birdie on the par-5 13th, to shoot his round of 70.
He leads Dustin Johnson, Luke List, Harold Varner III and Jazz Janewattananond by seven strokes heading into Sunday’s final round.
