PGA Tour: Min Woo Lee, Akshay Bhatia tied for lead at Players Championship after 36 holes

Garry Smits -Jacksonville Florida Times-Union

Min Woo Lee and Akshay Bhatia are tied for the lead at 11-under-par 133 after the second round of The Players Championship.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The Min Woo Lee First Coast phenomenon began two years ago when the Australian native, who was born to South Korean parents, contended at the Players Championship and found himself in the final twosome on Sunday, two behind Scottie Scheffler.

Lee shot 76 that day and Scheffler left him and the rest of the contenders in the dust on the way to the first of his back-to-back Players titles.

But Lee doesn’t forget, either his mistakes that day or the crowd support he gets from the galleries at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, who have come to love the skinny, scrappy 26-year-old with a name perfect for cheering.

The cheers of “Woooo” are echoing around the course once again.

Lee birdied four of his first five holes on the Stadium Course front nine on Friday (his back) and with a 66 is tied for the lead in The Players Championship with Akshay Bhatia (66) at 11-under-par 133 after the morning wave of the second round.

Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa lay in wait

They are one shot ahead of J.J. Spaun (68) and two clear of 2019 Players champion Rory McIlroy (68) and Collin Morikawa (65, the low round of the morning wave).

Tommy Fleetwood (66) and Jake Knapp (68) are tied at 7 under and Billy Horschel (71), Harris English (66), Emiliano Grillo (70) and Jacob Bridgeman (69) are tied at 6 under. First-round co-leader Lucas Glover played in the afternoon groups.

McIlroy, second on the Official World Golf Ranking, Morikawa (fourth) and Fleetwood (10th) are the only players among the top 10 who are on the first page of the leaderboard when the morning groups finished. Two-time defending champion and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler (70) is tied for 15th at 5-under.

Lee wants to play for the crowd

Lee teed off at 8:02 a.m. and was impressed by the crowd on the 10th tee, and the love they’re showing him

“A lot of support,” he said. “Even early in the morning at 8 [a.m.] the whole tee box was full. It’s a special feeling. You want to play well for yourself, but play well for others too.”

That he did. Lee birdied his first hole on a 10-foot putt. He was 3-under for the day when he turned, and then blitzed the first five holes of the front with a series of short-to-moderate birdie putts that were capped with a roll of nearly 11 feet at the difficult par-4 fifth.

Lee almost aced the par-3 third hole, with his tee shot catching a piece of the cup before coming to rest 3 feet, 8 inches away.

His only blip was the mess he made of the par-5 ninth, going from the right rough to a bunker and eventually making bogey. That enabled Bhatia, in his second Players, to catch him with a 5-foot birdie putt at the last.

“I just hit it really close,” Lee said. “Nearly holed it on 3. And that was really good shot. Clipped the hole. Felt really good over the ball. Just really good numbers and rolled some putts in. Today was solid again and hopefully two more of them.”

Lee said he’s learning how to negotiate his way around the pitfalls of the Stadium Course since his first appearance.

“Big learning curve,” he said. “I think a bit more level-headed and a lot of learning between then and now. Obviously Scottie won that tournament and he played really good and just, yeah, learned to be in that final group, yeah.”

Akshay Bhatia made Players run early

Bhatia, a two-time PGA Tour winner who had back-to-back top-10 finishes at the Mexico Open and Genesis Invitational before missing the cut last week at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, birdied four holes on the back, his front, highlighted by a 26-foot putt at No. 13.

His blips were bogeys at Nos. 1 and 7 but he had another long birdie putt at the fifth hole, from 26 feet.

Bhatia, 23, is the son of parents from India, and was born in Northridge, California. He had such a successful junior golf career (he won the Junior PGA twice and became the first high school player on a U.S. Walker Cup team) that he turned pro in 2019 and reached the Tour in 2023.

He said being tied with Lee shows the youth movement coming on the PGA Tour. He was a first-time Players participant last year and Lee is in his third Players.

“It’s really cool,” he said. “Obviously we had probably the youngest group in Players history [last year] with me, Nick [Dunlap] and Tommy [Kim]. So it’s pretty amazing how young golf is getting and how many young players there are. It’s refreshing to see. I feel like we’re kind of the next generation of the Rorys and Scotties.”

McIlroy hit a wall on his back nine

Speaking of McIlroy, he birdied the first hole when he holed out from the rough left of the green and proceeded to birdie every even-numbered hole on the back nine, including the 18th for the second day in a row.

He was tied for the lead when turning, took the lead outright with a birdie at No. 11, but then failed to make another and bogeyed the ninth hole from the fairway when he got caught with a bad lie in the left rough.

McIlroy is hoping that conditions that are predicted to bring more wind on the weekend come to pass, and his experience will be crucial.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I think it’s going to be really important to try to flight your ball and keep it under the tree line. This course is challenging enough, but with a wind like that, yeah, I’m excited for that challenge.