Tiger Woods streches the lead to 4 shots at Hazeltine !

A beautiful warm sunny day on Friday for the second round of the 91st PGA Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club.Tough scoring conditions though as the wind was blowing at 20mph on the 7,600 yards course.

Tiger missed the fairway on his opening hole,made his first bogey and dropped to -4,in a tie for the lead with Padraig Harrington.They were joined briefly by Spain’s Alvaro Quiros and England’s Graeme McDowell.Tiger,showing a lot of patience in the difficult conditions birdied the 6th and 7th holes to take a 2 shots lead at -6 over Harrington and the talented young Ross Fisher(GBR) who had shared it with Tiger at -5.The second bogey for Woods came at the 10th ,Harrington was hanging on 1 shot behind but had a bad stretch with bogeys at 11, 12 and 13 to drop to -2. As everybody was loosing ground Tiger’s patience was rewarded with 3 birdies in a row at 14, 15 and 16 to get to -8,a 4 shots lead over the resiliant Harrington who had bounced back with birdies at the short par 4 14 and the par 5 15 where he put the ball 15’ from the pin with a fantastic 300 yards 2nd shot off a fairway bunker. It looked like Tiger leading at -8 and Padraig in 2nd place alone at -4 would be paired together again on Saturday as they reached the 18.Tiger gave a little hope to the field by making a bogey on the last and Harrington missed a 3 footer for his par which took him to -3 Tied for second with Ross Fisher,Vijay Singh,Brendan Jones and U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover.Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood are T6 at -2. Despite the bogey at 18 a solid second round 2 under par 70 in brutal conditions following 67 on Thursday gives Tiger Woods a 4 shots lead going into the week-end.Tiger had some problems with the speed of the greens,he will look to improve on that on the next round.After missing the fairway on the first 2 holes his driving was impeccable,bad news for those chasing him. Two times PGA champion Vijay Singh(1998-2004) will be paired on Saturday in the last group with Tiger Woods who is looking for his 5th PGA title(1999,2000,2006,2007) and his 15th Major Championship.The last they were paired together(PGA 2004) Singh won,surely Woods will look to take his revenge over the Fidjian veteran. Lucas Glover(USA) and Brendan Jones (AUS) will be the surprising second-last pair to tee-off after Ross Fisher and Padraig Harrington.

It is expected to be windy again for the third round of the PGA Championship at Hazeltine,will anybody be able to challenge the world #1? I think it’s unlikely.

Check out the pairings at BetPhoenix.com Sportsbook and put a few bets on your favorite players,the race is on!