Wyndham Clark and Rory McIlroy react on the second day of the US Open at The Los Angeles Country Club on June 16, 2023.| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Wyndham Clark took benefit of beneficiant fairways and delicate course circumstances to leap to the highest of the leaderboard whereas Rory McIlroy overcame a sluggish begin to card a 67 halfway by way of second spherical motion on the US Open on Friday.

Clark drilled his fourth birdie of the day on his penultimate gap to take the outright lead at nine-under par, a shot forward of in a single day leaders Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele, who went out within the afternoon wave.

“Fairways are pretty wide out here so you can just bomb it,” stated Clark, who received the Wells Fargo Championship final month.

McIlroy birdied 4 of his final 5 holes together with the par-three ninth the place he narrowly missed a hole-in-one to maneuver inside a shot of the lead.

“I thought it might have hit the hole, which would have been...,” stated McIlroy, trailing off.

“But I’ll take a two there. Obviously a great way to finish the round and a bit of a reversal of yesterday where I made that bogey at the last.”

The shot of the day to date got here when Matt Fitzpatrick nailed a hole-in-one on the par-3 15, making him the primary U.S. Open defending champion to document an ace within the event’s 123-year historical past.

LIV Golf’s Dustin Johnson made a multitude of his second gap and completed with an unpleasant quadruple bogey to tumble down the leaderboard however he battled again to card even par 70 and keep within the hunt going into the weekend.

Course circumstances have been beneficial for scoring on account of a thick marine layer blanketing Los Angeles however the solar started to shine and wind picked up simply because the second wave went out on Friday.

Firmer circumstances ought to make the course positioned within the coronary heart of Los Angeles a extra becoming problem for the world’s greatest at a significant that prides itself as being the best take a look at in golf.

The event is the primary main for the reason that bombshell announcement that the PGA Tour and rival circuit LIV would kind a unified business entity. A report on Thursday indicated the U.S. Justice Department would overview the plans.