PGA Championship 2018: Cut line updates on Saturday

Update: After the storms came and crushed St. Louis, the plans for a Friday night cut were quickly washed out at Bellerive. Play was called for the day after they were pulled off the course at 4:35 p.m. ET. An 8 a.m. resumption of the second round on Saturday has not done much to move the cut line. It’s sticking at even-par and it looks like that is not going to change.

The second round should finish around 11:30 a.m. ET and then we will make the cut and get the third round going about 30 minutes after that. Here’s the tentative schedule for what should be a long day at the PGA.

It’s not surprising that we got a lengthy storm delay given it’s August in St. Louis, but we should be back on schedule with 54 holes completed by Saturday night. Updated leaderboard and likely cut casualties down below.

There were no major surprises or developments on Thursday at the PGA Championship. It was a rather boring, procedural day that went about as expected. The one aspect of the day that was unexpected may have been the scores. Throughout the practice days, we’d heard that the best in the world were going to go deeeep on this Bellerive course. It was soft and wide and easy and the winning score was going to be 20-under, or maybe higher.

We didn’t get a wave of those super-low rounds on Thursday and the scoring averages for both the morning and afternoon waves were over-par. Gary Woodland came in late and posted 6-under 64, just edging past Rickie’s 5-under 65. But that was really it for the mid-60s rounds and it came as a surprise.

Friday, however, is much different story in the early wave. The birdies are coming in bunches and it appears we’re in for a day of low scoring. Andrew Landry posted red numbers on six of his first eight holes. Kevin Kisner went out in 29, making birdies on some of the Bellerive’s toughest par-4s to shoot into a tie for the lead during the a.m. draw. The PGA of America used some tough pin placements on Thursday and now they’ve got much more benign spots and setup on Friday.

What this means for the late wave of tee times is that they have to put the pedal down from the start. It’s going to be a birdiefest. If you’re over par, you need to make a move into the red to make the cut, which is probably going to come in around even-par or perhaps lower. This is not the U.S. Open, where even-par could be a winning score. That’s not even going to get you to the weekend at this PGA, and that’s fine.

Tiger Woods is starting his second round at even-par, which was about as good a score as he could have posted given his disaster of a start on Thursday morning. The 70 was a grindy inspiration after he started his PGA 3-over through his first two holes. Woods came in over his final 10 holes in 3-under and he’ll need to keep that kind of pace on Friday. He cannot stall out around even-par or give many shots back if he wants to play the final two rounds of major championship golf this year.

Bubba Watson is probably the biggest name that is definitely going home early. Bubba was a trendy pick this week. The thought process was that he loves to hit that swooping cut shot and Bellerive is dominated by dogleg lefts (12 of 14 par4s/5s). He’s also a bomber. But Bubba is 7-over on the day, 7-over for the championship, and ejecting early for the second straight major.

Bubba is for sure gone, and others who could join him are Phil Mickelson, Paul Casey, and Tony Finau, some more of the pre-tourney trendy picks. With the way scores are going, that cut line could keep moving into the red as the afternoon wave takes aim on a gettable Bellerive. Here’s your cut line as the morning wave finishes up their second rounds and here’s a live leaderboard.

Also — keep this Data Golf link handy. The brilliant minds over there have a live predictive model for each player and updating percentages of where the cut line will fall — go here for that great work.

Here’s your updated leaderboard as the end of the second round draws near.