Cognizant Classic: Bud Cauley's inspiring return includes 36-hole lead in hometown event
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Bud Cauley is halfway home to one of the special feel-good stories on the PGA Tour.
The Palm Beach Gardens resident, playing in just his second PGA Tour event since suffering major injuries in a 2018 car accident, made an 11-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to take the lead after the second round of the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches.
Cauley’s 6-under 65 moved him to 11-under 131 and a one-shot lead over Austin Eckroat and Garrick Higgo on the Champion Course at PGA National.
“There were a lot of times I thought my career was over,” said Cauley, 33. “I’m just happy I kept after it and didn’t stop trying. I saw a leaderboard coming down 18 and I knew if I birdied the hole, I would be leading. It feels great to be in this position.”
Cauley was a passenger in the car that crashed in 2018. He had finished two rounds in the 2018 Memorial Tournament and had missed the cut. His injuries included six broken ribs, a broken leg and a collapsed lung. Three years later, he needed surgery to remove the plates in his chest, but during the procedure, they discovered that they couldn’t take them out because bone had grown on top of the plates.
“After a year goes by, and two years goes by, your optimism starts to fade a little bit,” he said. “I gave myself enough time to prepare before I started playing again. My expectation was to come out and compete. Saying it is one thing; doing it is another.”
From Tom D'Angelo: Rickie Fowler uses wind to his advantage in solid round at Cognizant Classic
Cauley showed little rust Thursday when he started the tournament with five birdies on his first six holes. He added six more birdies Friday without a bogey.
“There’s a lot of emotions,” he said. “But this place is so tough, you can’t think about it.”
Normalcy returned to the Cognizant Championship in the Palm Beaches on Friday when Mother Nature turned her fan back on.
Thursday’s unusually calm conditions were replaced by customary 15-to-20-mph winds Friday that restored the punch to the Champion Course. Occasional gusts in the mid-20s perplexed the game’s top golfers, increasing the scoring average by almost two shots before the wind subsided later in the day after a storm.
“It played tough out there today,” Tom Kim said after shooting a second consecutive 3-under 68. “Obviously, this course is very penalizing, and when the wind is up like this, you’ve got to play really, really solid.”
Play was stopped at 6:22 p.m. with 10 players still on the course.
Higgo was 7-under (without a bogey) on Friday as he tries for his second career PGA Tour win despite dealing with a wrist injury.
“I’m hitting it better,” said Higgo, who won the 2021 Palmetto Championship at Congaree. “I'm giving myself more chances, and the putter has been good for the last couple weeks. Just putting for birdie more often.”
There’s little doubt the players who went early Thursday and late Friday got the favorable end of the draw, weatherwise. After some showers rolled through PGA National in the midafternoon Friday, the winds died down and the greens were softened. Higgo, Cauley and Eckroat all played Friday afternoon.
“I definitely think we got the favorable end,” Eckroat said. “We had basically 18 holes of no wind yesterday, and it definitely looked like it was windier this morning than it was for us. It was still windy out there.”
Eckroat also had a bogey-free round as he tries to improve on last year’s runner-up finish to Jason Day in the Byron Nelson Classic.
World No. 2 Rory McIlroy, a Jupiter resident, birdied three of his last four holes to shoot another 67 and sits just three behind Higgo at 8-under 134. McIlroy is tied for sixth with fellow Northern Irishman Shane Lowry (67), last week’s tour winner Jake Knapp (66), Jupiter’s Cameron Young (69) and five others.
“It was a good finish,” McIlroy said. “It was nice to finally see a putt go in on 15 as well as 16. It’s one of those courses where you have to stay super patient because the scoring is never going to get away from you.”
Victor Perez, who is tied for fourth with Kevin Yu, is trying to join Jupiter’s Matthieu Pavon, who won at Pebble Beach, as the only players from France to win on the PGA Tour since 1907. If Perez can continue to putt like he did Friday, needing only 23, he’ll soon join Pavon in the winner’s circle.
“It’s obviously difficult to try to get the ball close, but I was able to hole a few putts, which is needed on a day like this to shoot under par,” Perez said. “You hit a good shot, and it’s 7, 8 feet and you still have to hole that putt.”
Yu, who had a pair of top 10s on the West Coast Swing, said the key to his round was to pick his spots when to aim at pins.
“You have to play defense on the tough holes and play aggressively on the easier holes,” said Yu. “A lot of it was ball-striking and strategy.”
Among the notables who'll miss the projected cut at 2-under 140 were Daniel Berger (75-143), former U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland (74-144) of Delray Beach, former then-Honda Classic champions Sepp Straka (74-142), Padraig Harrington (73-144) and Sungjae Im (72-143), and Eric Cole (71-149), who lost a playoff here last year to Chris Kirk (70 Friday, tied for 24th). Cole’s missed cut was just his second in his last 23 starts.
Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches
Through Sunday, PGA National, Palm Beach Gardens
TV: Saturday, 1 p.m., GOLF; 3 p.m., NBC; Sunday, 1 p.m., GOLF; 3 p.m., NBC
Tickets: thecognizantclassic.com
2023 champion: Chris Kirk
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Bud Cauley's inspiring return includes lead at Cognizant Classic
