DETROIT — Canada’s Taylor Pendrith shot a 7-under 65 Friday to take a one-stroke lead over Tony Finau heading into the weekend Rocket Mortgage Classic.
Pendrith and Finau shared the first-round lead at 8-under and will be in Saturday’s final group, pairing a 31-year-old PGA TOUR rookie with a 32-year-old veteran coming off his third career victory.
Rookie Lee Hodges (66) was three shots back.
PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year Cameron Young tied the Detroit Golf Club record 63 for a share of fourth place — five shots back — with Russell Henley (65) and Stuart Cink (66).
Rookie Sahit Tigala (67) was another stroke in a group that included defending FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay, who bounced back from an opening-round 70 with a 65.
Davis Love III, the 58-year-old US Presidents Cup captain, was in Detroit partly to play and more importantly to get to know the players on and off the court who could represent the country in September at the Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina.
Love missed the cut at 5-over 149, but made the most of the opportunity to dine with some Presidents Cup contenders and play two rounds with Young and Will Zalatoris.
Young and Zalatoris, teammates at Wake Forest and close friends, could be reunited in two months.
“If they make the team, they’re naturals,” Love said.
Zalatoris, the world No. 13, may have felt the pressure playing Love because he barely made it through. He had to bogey his 36th hole to get to 3 under, the cut line, with a pair of lackluster rounds.
If Young doesn’t earn an automatic spot on the U.S. team, he could be named captain.
“Cameron is evolving,” Love said. “Go back to Jordan Spieth. No one had heard of him and the next thing you know a year later he’s on the Presidents Cup team and Cam is headed there too. No one had ever heard of him on Korn Ferry, and here he is, almost winning a major.”
Young finished runner-up at The Open Championship and at the PGA Championship, he narrowly missed a playoff. He has four second-place finishes and is third in two tournaments. And in Detroit, Young showed Love up close what he could do.
“Hopefully I’ll make some case,” he said.
Pendrith was playing in his third tournament after being sidelined for almost four months with a broken rib, an interruption that reminded him of his youth.
“We have a long off-season in Canada so I haven’t touched a club all winter, I’ve generally been growing so I guess I’m used to it in a way,” he said.
Pendrith said, in fact, that he can compete with the best when he’s healthy, and he’s shown that so far at Detroit Golf Club.
However, no one has been better than Finau lately.
The Salt Lake City native of Tongan-Samoan heritage is 32 under over his last 107 holes, including rallying from a five-stroke deficit last Sunday in Minnesota to win the 3M Open by three strokes.
Pendrith tried to pull away in the second round in Detroit, opening with four straight birdies and six in his first 10 holes. He had two birdies and a bogey over the final five holes to finish Friday alone in first.
Finau, meanwhile, got off to a slow start with just one birdie on the front nine before carding five birdies on the back. He has a chance to become the first PGA TOUR player to win two consecutive regular-season events since Brendan Todd in 2019.
“Every time you win, you build confidence,” Finau said. “I was just happy to carry that confidence from last week right into this week.”
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