COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Padraig Harrington and Stewart Cink endured the ups and downs of the U.S. Senior Open together for a second straight day Friday and found themselves tied for the lead.
The payoff — sharing the final tee time to kick off the weekend at the hilly, hard-to-read Broadmoor.
Cink made up five shots over the final nine holes of his head-to-head pairing against Harrington, and the players headed into the weekend tied at 6-under 134, along with late-charging Mark Hensby.
Cink shot 31 on the front nine, their second nine, to match Harrington’s score on the back.
Both players — the only two who average more than 300 yards driving on the 50-and-over PGA Tour Champions — called it a comfortable pairing, especially on a hilly course at altitude where gauging distance is anything but routine.
“If anything, he’d be a little bit longer than me,” Harrington said. “But I suppose I know his game enough that I can see what’s happening, as well. He is definitely a partner I would choose to play with.”
Hensby shot his second straight round of 3-under 67, finishing the day with his 14th and 15th birdies of the tournament. That included a 20-footer on No. 8 that would have been from closer had his tee shot not hit Doug Barron’s ball on the green. Hensby was 9-under par on the front nine and 3 over on the back after two days.
“Making a lot of birdies, so that’s a good thing around here,” he said.
Three behind was Thomas Bjorn (69), followed by Y.E. Yang (68) and Billy Andrade (69) at 2 under.
At 1 under, Darren Clarke, Steve Flesch and Miguel Angel Jiménez — whose round included an approach on 18 from closer to the driving range than the fairway and a double hit from the rough on No. 2 (no penalty for that) — rounded out the list of nine players heading into the weekend under par.
Cink hit all 18 greens in regulation, making it 35 of 36 for the week. He called that stat overrated, especially at a course where the real test starts on the notoriously difficult-to-read greens that cant away from a monument lurking above the course on Cheyenne Mountain.
“You don’t want to be chipping downhill on this course, it’s not a secret,” said the 52-year-old Cink, the 2009 British Open champion who is playing in his first U.S. Senior Open.
Cink two-putted from 45 feet on No. 9 for his fifth birdie on the front and a score of 66 — the best of the tournament so far.
After Harrington shot 31 on the more difficult back nine, then kept the lead at five with a birdie on the par-5 third, he was thinking there might be an opportunity to open a big lead heading into the weekend.
A pair of three-putts — one on the seventh and the other on the par-3 fourth green that has been slowed down to temper the severe slope — resulted in bogeys.
“I was hoping I’d make more of it,” Harrington said. “I made a mis-club on 15 to make bogey, and then obviously going into the front nine you’re hoping to make some birdies. Nothing is guaranteed.”
But it ended well for the three-time major champion, whose wins came at the British Open 2007 and ’08 and 2008 PGA Championship. Short-sided in a greenside bunker on No. 9, Harrington made a 20-footer for a birdie to pull into a tie.
“I got a lovely read off Stewart. I don’t think I would have given it as much break, so that was nice,” said Harrington, who won the U.S. Senior Open in 2022. “They’re the breaks you get when things are going well.”
Among those who missed the cut were 12-time senior major champion Bernhard Langer, who shot 77, and Ángel Cabrera, a two-time major winner this year, who shot 75. Both missed the number by three.
David Toms, the champion the last time the Senior Open came to the Broadmoor in 2018, hit an approach to five feet on 18 for birdie to make the cut on the number.
But the headliners Saturday are Harrington and Cink, whose biggest meetings before this weekend may have been in one Ryder Cup foursomes match in 2002 and another fourball contest in 2004. (Cink won both times.)
“I love watching him play. I would hope that he probably feels similarly about me,” Cink said. “We have mutual respect for each other. He’s a world-class player and he’s been doing it a long time. I would love it if we could go the distance here.”
