PGA Championship 2016: Leaderboard updates, results and more from Saturday’s round

Last year, the rollicking trash fire but salvaged event that was golf’s reintroduction to the Olympic Games forced the PGA Championship out of it usual second-week-of-August time slot, ahead two weeks to the end of July. The result was a major championship schedule that looked something more like horse racing’s triple crown, a nearly untenable travel schedule for players, and a fourth major championship that many fans might just look over due to the temporary, crammed-in date. This year, it’s back in the normal slot -- but it seems to be heading to May in 2019. (That’s dumb! But more on that later.) Just enjoy it in August, for now.

For casual golf fans that only tune in for the four major championships, the PGA often gets overlooked anyway. This ranking, from Deadspin’s Drew Magary, is the common one among casual fans.

The PGA of America has set out what is an optimistic schedule for Sunday at Baltusrol. They’re stuck sending the players off of one tee and in groups of two at this point, but they’re going to try and get things in by Sunday night. Here’s the plan.

They will resume the third round bright and early at 7 a.m. ET on Sunday. There are six groups who have not even teed off yet. That’s an hour of tee times, with the leaders and final pairing, Robert Streb and Jimmy Walker, going off at 8 a.m. ET. If they play fast, Streb and Walker could be done just after Noon ET.

The PGA Championship is likely headed for a Monday finish, and possibly even a Tuesday finish if the weather gods conspire against it as they did on Saturday. The PGA of America, and everyone else paying attention to a forecast, knew there were storms headed toward Baltusrol on Saturday afternoon. They probably could not have predicted that they would be so intense and persistent as to wipe out the entire afternoon of golf -- the horn blew at 2:15 p.m. ET and the players never came back out on the course. But it was still easy to see that a significant weather disruption was coming on Saturday and that sticking on schedule for a Saturday third-round finish and Sunday evening finish was going to be a challenge.

If this were a PGA Tour event, they would have reacted instantaneously and put the the field out in groups of three and off split tees early on Saturday morning. They do this regularly throughout the season when the forecast is dicey, either in the morning or late afternoon. This is the required order when the field is at 156 players before the cut. After the cut, however, sending them off split tees in groups of three results in about a two-hour block of tee times. The Tour does this all the time with success and gets Sunday on-time finishes. Majors try to avoid it.

The rains at Baltusrol chased away what had been an entertaining and rowdy New Jersey crowd. But one fan early in the day went a little too far with Bubba Watson, saying something in his backswing that fired up the two-time Masters winner and his caddie, Ted Scott.

Bubba stared the individual(s) in question down and challenged them to say something again, while Scott delivered the sickest of burns, imploring the clowns to go home to grandma’s basement and tweet about it. Fortunately for us, the PGA.com marquee group stream picked up the entire tense exchange.

It is moving day at the 2016 PGA Championship with the remaining 86 players attempting to make a run at the lead in the final major championship of the season. It was a fluid leaderboard during the first two rounds with several players posting impressive scores. Jimmy Walker will open the day with at least a share of the lead for the second straight day, but there are plenty of challengers chasing him.

Walker is tied for the lead at 9-under with Robert Streb. The two lead a group of 12 players who will begin the third round at 4-under or better. That group includes Jason Day at 7-under, Henrik Stenson at 6-under and Rickie Fowler at 4-under. Day, the defending PGA Champion, made a surge with a 5-under round of 65. His round included a stretch of seven birdies over eight holes. If he can continue to play like that, he could very well be on his way to back-to-back PGA Championship victories. Stenson might derail Day’s plans and claim back-to-back major victories. Fresh off a win at The Open just three weeks ago, Stenson is just three strokes off the lead.

When the week started, Friday at Baltusrol looked like a mess. The forecast was ominous, setting up a full day of stop-and-start golf at the PGA Championship.

Fortunately for the PGA of America, and everyone trying to keep up during this manic golf summer, we finished up Friday night on schedule and will have a normal Saturday start. The rains did come, dumping buckets on the North Jersey course overnight and into the morning. But all we got was a 50-minute delay early on in the morning that had them squeegee a few fairways and greens off while the players stayed in place. That left plenty of cushion for the full 156 players to get in before darkness and for a cut to be made, with a normal tee sheet set out for Saturday.

Business picked up on Friday at the PGA Championship. We had another major championship record-matching round. The No. 1 player in the world went crazy and shot up the leaderboard. Phil Mickelson started with a tee shot that left the golf course property. Jordan Spieth made an early move, then came out on the right side of a potential controversial penalty.

Baltusrol is giving this deep field a chance to make plenty of birdies, so there will be constant opportunities for leaderboard shuffling and movement throughout the weekend. Some scores and stories from the second round in New Jersey.

Rory McIlroy’s putter may be the reason Rory McIlroy won’t be playing the weekend at Baltusrol but it was his typically solid iron and wedge play that let him down at the end and had him on an early flight out of New Jersey on Friday.

Needing at least a par on the final hole of Friday’s second round to avoid missing his second major cut of the season, McIlroy flew the green with his approach shot and proceeded to chunk his way to a bogey-6 and a 3-over for 36 holes.