{"id":17823,"date":"2026-06-08T14:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/17823\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T14:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:09:32","slug":"berger-extends-lead-as-mcilroy-rallies-at-bay-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/17823\/","title":{"rendered":"Berger extends lead as McIlroy rallies at Bay Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arnold Palmer Invitational &#8211; second-round leaderboard<\/p>\n<p>-13 D Berger (US); -8 A Bhatia (US); -7 S Theegala (US), L Aberg (Swe), C Morikawa (US); -6 R Fowler (US); -5 X Schauffele (US), R Henley (US)<\/p>\n<p>Selected others: -4 R McIlroy (NI); -3 S Scheffler (US); -2 H Hall (Eng) -1 J Spieth (US); E R MacIntyre (Sco), M Fitzpatrick (Eng); +1 T Fleetwood<\/p>\n<p><a data-ylk=\"slk:Full leaderboard;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/golf\/uspga-tour\/leaderboard?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Baol.com%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bsport%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Full leaderboard<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Daniel Berger extended his lead to five shots at the Arnold Palmer Invitational as Rory McIlroy rallied in the second round.<\/p>\n<p>American Berger, 32, followed up his superb opening nine-under-par 63 &#8211; one short of the Bay Hill course record &#8211; by shooting a 68 to move to 13 under.<\/p>\n<p>Compatriot Akshay Bhatia is in second on eight under after carding a 66, the lowest round of the day in Orlando.<\/p>\n<p>Northern Irishman McIlroy went round in 68 to move to four under and a share of ninth place.<\/p>\n<p>Berger, who has not won on the PGA Tour since 2021, put himself on course for the \u00a33m top prize thanks to a clean run on the back nine which included three birdies.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I actually feel like I played better [today] &#8211; the course was a little tougher,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m looking forward to the next couple of days and seeing the challenge they bring.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Americans Sahith Theegala and Collin Morikawa and Sweden&#8217;s Ludvig Aberg are tied for third on seven under, with American Ricky Fowler one shot further back.<\/p>\n<p>McIlroy, who birdied four of the first seven holes on the back nine, said: &#8220;I played the last 10 holes really, really well.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Overall I am really pleased. I played a very sort of controlled, patient round of golf, which you need to do around here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>American world number one Scottie Scheffler bogeyed the 18th in a round of 71 that left him three under.<\/p>\n<p>England&#8217;s Tommy Fleetwood, who was four over after the first round, shot three birdies on the back nine in a second-round 69 to make the cut on one over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arnold Palmer Invitational &#8211; second-round leaderboard -13 D Berger (US); -8 A Bhatia (US); -7 S Theegala (US),&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1348,7424,1553,7422,1752,2022,7359,7423,208],"class_list":["post-17823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-collin-morikawa","tag-arnold-palmer-invitational","tag-c-morikawa","tag-collin-morikawa","tag-d-berger","tag-daniel-berger","tag-mcilroy","tag-s-scheffler","tag-s-theegala","tag-scottie-scheffler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}