– Hideki Matsuyama (-12) has signed a card of 64 strokes in the second round of competition of his career at Wentworth and is the sole leader of the BMW PGA Championship. He didn’t do too badly in the first round either, with the 68 he handed in on Thursday. He had never played this tournament, but judging by what we’ve seen in the first two days, it seems as if he had a home there, in Virginia Water. Matsuyama is like that, there’s no point in trying to understand him.
The fact is that tomorrow he will start with a one-stroke lead over three of the eleven Ryder boys in the tournament, Ludvig Aberg (-11), Viktor Hovland (-11) and Justin Rose (-11), and certainly it is not advisable to underestimate the Japanese player, as extraordinary as he is inscrutable.
– It happened nine months ago, although it seems like ten years. Matsuyama won The Sentry, the first tournament of 2025, and did so with a total of -35, breaking all existing records. Since then, hold on tight: he hasn’t even finished in the top ten all year. Is he inscrutable or not?
– Despite everything, as he usually plays every weekend (he has missed two cuts this season) and finishes so many times within the top 25, he made it to the TOUR Championship, the last of the FedEx Cup playoffs… where he finished second to last. Matsuyama is like that.
– Watching the Japanese player at Wentworth today, you wouldn’t think you’re witnessing anything you’ve never seen before, because it’s not news that Matsuyama sometimes turns greens into targets and plays darts. What a way he has of leaving the ball close. The curious thing is that if tomorrow he were seen in trouble, from problem to problem, no one would be surprised. That’s just how Matsuyama is.
– Is he really like that, or does it just seem that way? Because his overall numbers, in any case, speak of a true titan of consistency. In June 2013, he finished tenth in that US Open at Merion, which Rose won, and with that result, he entered the world’s top 50… And until today. He has never been out of the top 50 since then, and more than twelve years have passed. Matsuyama, ultimately, is almost always a bit more and better than you and I think he is at this very moment.
– Tommy Fleetwood (-2) holed a birdie putt on the 18th from just over two metres to make the cut and, watch out, still give himself a chance to do something big, in a tournament where big comebacks over the weekend are quite common, for some reason. With the Englishman, ten of the eleven Ryder players will be there over the weekend. Only Rasmus Hojgaard has missed out, who seems to be in a decompression phase after all he fought to get into the team. He and the group better hope he regains the right level of compression, competitive freshness, in time…
– Ángel Hidalgo (-6) is continuing his great week in Ireland with a second round of 67 strokes and a bogey-free card, which is never easy at Wentworth. There he turned his season around, but here, where many more points are at stake, he could already be setting his sights on really powerful goals. It’s curious that the best Spaniard on the leaderboard, the only one ahead of Hidalgo, is Pablo Larrazábal (-10), a player from whom the Malagueño could have been cloned in so many aspects. It seems to be about unpredictable geniuses, saving the differences between the Spaniards and Matsuyama, who truly is a player of supreme category.
– Besides Rahm (-4), Eugenio Chacarra (-4), Ángel Ayora (-2), and Jorge Campillo (-2) have also made the cut, and all three confirmed it in that iconic final stretch of the course, the two final par 5s, holes 17 and 18. Chacarra finished with eagle and birdie, and Ayora with birdie and birdie, the same as Campillo. They are holes that can be taken advantage of, of course, but you have to play them very well to give yourself chances, and it’s usually not a good idea to arrive at that point of the course with unfinished business. Good composure from them. Nacho Elvira (-2), who will also be there over the weekend, closed the round with pars on those holes, although he had done his homework earlier. The same goes for them as for Fleetwood: those who still consider that at least one of these players will finish high, very high, on the leaderboard on Sunday won’t be wrong.
