golf central on youtube brought to you by apex irons from callaway [Music] hello and welcome into this golf central special i'm cara banks alongside randall chamblin we've got some pretty good golf going on this week a major championship of course at the aig women's open is one of the big events so let's start there and we'll show you how the leaderboard looks at the halfway stage this through 36 holes the lead is shared by the 2018 champion georgia hall and american mina harrigan who is having herself a heck of a resurgent year yesterday the biggest story was well nelly corner the world number one and reigning olympic gold medalist you can see she dropped off of that first page of the leaderboard today let's hear what she had to say after her second round i just wasn't putting well honestly putts weren't dropping the afternoon the greens got a little bumpy and unfortunately i was on the wrong side of those bumps so they were constantly missing but you know it's golf everyone keeps talking about how i'm playing so well but i'm gonna shoot bad scores you know i'm human so just a little punch of reality that i'm human and i'm gonna continue working these next two days and see how it goes i don't think i hit it that bad um the only thing i kind of struggled on was just making those putts and kind of getting it close you know i was on the greens but i still had 20 footers and it was kind of hard so it's definitely very important to keep yourself in it when you know you don't have your end game 17 is a really difficult hole you know today i had five iron off the t and five iron in so it's a long hole and it's crazy to think of two under so far in that hole but that's just golf it's funny but it's definitely a good momentum boost that i could still know i can make some putts that was nice but other than that you know still got a lot of work ahead of myself so yeah she is human brandel she's dropped out of the top 10 she's tied 12th now 4 under for the championship after a slower day by her standards and i think she just alluded to the fact that you know she does realize all this pressure and talk that comes of her good play and it has to get to you sometimes you would think yeah it's hard not to uh she raises our expectations you see her golf swing it's not often you see somebody come along that has power that has accuracy that has every element of the game so you start to talk in that direction annika was like that lorena ochoa was like that um so yeah she certainly raised our expectations even though today she shot 73 she knows she played well she still hit a number of good shots it just didn't work out that they ended up as close as they needed to be she made a few mistakes and and paid the price for those and didn't putt brilliantly but it would surprise nobody if she went out there tomorrow shot something perhaps you know 65 60 surprises nobody but she's only three backs she got all the time in the world to make up those uh those three shots over the weekend and she has already had a career year her first major championship that gold medal in tokyo so we will look forward to the third round of the aig women's open from carnosty in scotland on saturday meanwhile it is the first leg of the fedex cup playoffs on the pga tour this week and here are how things look at the halfway stage of the northern trust john ram held on to his lead that he did share with justin thomas overnight after the two opened with rounds of 63 yesterday with a 67 today genre maintains a slight advantage over tony fina who had a great day with a 64 that included a bogey at the last and just a word for xander chocolate and jordan spieth who both went around in just 62 strokes today so let's hear from some of those names on the leaderboard um nothing really changed i just i started hitting better shots i mean i think um i don't know i just had no club face control i was starting left starting it right i definitely missed more left and right but um i just i didn't feel like i was going to hit bad shots i just every time i looked up the ball was never where i wanted it to be and i wasn't hitting i wasn't hitting everything solid having a lot of curve on some shots so it just was frustrating because i felt like for as good as i felt over it it was because i hit it yesterday i just couldn't really execute but um it's bad i mean as terrible as i drove it today to step up on five and hit that three-wood like i did probably gave me a little bit of confidence and then making birdie and i knew i had some scoring chances coming in with with six and eight um obviously making eagle on eight and bernie and seven was a steal but it was nice to to cap off a good day it's nice to be boggy free but it's not like he's goal number one right so uh might be actually the first time i go 36 holes boogie free i yeah i mean the goal is to win a tournament and you know to put yourself in the best position right so i'm better you know if i choose rather be leading than boogie free what are you most pleased with your 36 holes this week in your game i think i would say uh the way i've kept my composure you know i definitely believe it or not hit my fair share of bad shots today there was two of them second on 16 and the second and three two shots where i have a wedge in hand and i'm missing the grain i'm leaving myself really tough up and down and i was able to make it putts for par and much like yesterday i was able to save a couple of good ones so i'm you know just accepting that i can miss shots i guess that's the best way to explain it is what happens here you know you miss you get a little too greedy mr green and you're gonna have a tougher up and down and i've been able to save those so far but um you know coming to the weekend i definitely gonna have to to clean a couple of these mistakes up yeah just try and learn you know i've i've learned a lot i feel like being in this position before not talking about the ryder cup just in general at the top of the leaderboard with 36 holes to play my game's in a good place you know every opportunity is different you know even though some may feel the same it's it's a new opportunity i've gotta i've gotta approach it as that and um the game's in a good place for 36 holes to go and it's a golf course that's going to be receptive so you know guys are going to go low you know so you know i've got off to a great start but you're going i'm not going to going to have to continue to make birdies if i'm gonna win this golf tournament how motivated are you to go out and get that next win so you can stop hearing about wins from idiots like us yeah i mean i i'm motivated to win you know i you know i i think uh whatever else comes with that and you guys can stop talking about whatever comes with it you know it comes with it to me i'm more motivated to win i've worked extremely hard on my body um my mind you know i've done a lot of work on myself to just be better and try to be a better person be a better golfer so i feel like i've uh accomplished some of those things and and hopefully you know getting a w i think just just for myself to feel accomplished would be it would be a great thing i have to say he has a winning attitude alone it is so impressive to hear tony fina he's always having to answer the questions of why aren't you winning and do you choke and can't you close and you know he's got seven top tens this season so far and well looks set to get another one and we'll see if it comes to to a victory but look john rahm's the guy on top and he has proven so far this year brandel he's pretty hard to beat like he he almost never plays bad you know he's he's only missed five fairways and seven greens and 36 holes i mean he almost i know it he he could only think of two shots that he missed you know really um you know he's the least likely to play poorly over the weekend and the most likely to stretch the lead out uh you know he leads the field and strokes game tita green he leads the tour in so many different aspects but i felt like it it looked like him winning a major was was inevitable but they never are i mean there's only four of them a year but he's so good that he can win tournaments and majors going forward with less than his best stuff and it's not often that someone comes along that you can say that about them so he doesn't have to play his best to win over the next couple of days but if he does no one's going to catch him well and it's kind of incredible to think that all this comes with a couple of chances potentially robbed from him this year we all know what happened at the memorial he was arriving in tokyo as the out and out favorite for the olympic games and and have that opportunity taken away from him as well if someone is going to challenge him who is the biggest threat well i'm a big fan of tony fenow he he plays a little tight on sundays the whole gets a little smaller for him on sundays at some point he will get over that hurdle and you would like to think it would give him the confidence to go on to play to the best of his ability he is a world-class player with only one win on the pga tour i can't ever recall saying that about any other player but beyond that it's justin thomas justin thomas got off to a sort of a squirrely start but then turned things around and played very much like he did in round number one on his back nine today i expect that to continue especially if the greens are soft and the weather stays to the east scoring conditions are going to be ideal and justin thomas can do amazing things of course the weather could be a big factor this weekend of course at the northern trust we will track that as well and thank you for watching our coverage on golf central [Music]