DUBLIN, Ohio — All credit to Ryan Gerard for a standout effort Friday in the second round of the Memorial Tournament, carding a three-under 69 in increasingly breezy conditions at Muirfield Village Golf Club. Not only did he assume the clubhouse lead at eight-under 136, but he also added to the golf lexicon in the aftermath. Not sure which is more impressive.
Thanks to the Raleigh, N.C., we can now employ the term “grimy up-and-downs” for scraping it around effectively to salvage a good score.
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Here’s Gerard summing up his play on Friday after sharing the first-round lead with a 67: “Overall proud of how I kind of grinded from the spots that I put myself in off the tee. Made a lot of grimy kind of up-and-downs and really cool kind of, like, hack-outs, and I just felt like I did a good job of keeping myself in the hole. No matter where I was or what the position might be, I kind of did a good job of just staying in the hole and kind of grinding until the end.”
In case you’re wondering what a “grimy up-and-down” looks like, well, we were, too.
“I thought 12 was into the wind and it was off the left, but I couldn’t hit the club that I wanted to hit because if it was into the wind at all, it would go in the water. So I hit it in the back bunker. And it was on a down slope, and I landed in the foot of, like, rough grass and kind of rolled out to six feet. So I would say that was pretty grimy,” he explained.
Actually, that sounded kind of beautiful.
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“But, yeah, I hit it in two hazards off the tee on par 5s on the back nine and hit both greens in regulation from 240-plus,” Gerard continued. “So I think those were solid, too. But it’s just kind of keeping yourself in the hole, it’s not easy, and allowing yourself to be positive. Even though you might not be making great swings, just trying to stay positive out there.”
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Gerard, who won his first PGA Tour title last year at the Barracuda Championship, hit only six of 14 fairways on Friday and 12 greens in regulation. He birdied three of the first six holes before the wind picked up. Then he did well to manage his game with two birdies and two bogeys. Standing in the seventh fairways, he tried to apply sunscreen, the spray-on kind, and he knew things were going to get interesting.
“And all of a sudden it started going all over the place,” he said. “And my caddie was like, ‘Oh, I guess it’s windy now.’ So, yeah, that was our nod to Fluff holding a cigarette up in the air and watching the smoke blow all over the place was just spraying some sunscreen and watching it blow.”
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A second-round 69 left Ryan Gerard at eight under through 36 holes at Muirfield Village.
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Mike Mulholland
Gerard is only 26, but obviously he has seen the video of Tiger Woods’ former caddie Mike Cowan testing the wind direction with one of his omnipresent lung darts during the 1997 Masters.
Yeah, grimy. It’s going to stick.
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