Port St. Lucie, Fla. – North Carolina’s Carter Jenkins, South Carolina’s Matt NeSmith and Alabama’s Wil McCurdy shared the lead at 10-under par before teeing off in round three at Mackenzie Tour – PGA TOUR Canada Q-School when play was suspended due to darkness at PGA Golf Club’s Wanamaker Course on Wednesday.
Play was suspended at 7:30 p.m., with the entire field left to complete round three. Jenkins, NeSmith and McCurdy were among the second wave of round three tee times set to tee off Friday morning.
Finishing up round two earlier on Thursday, NeSmith followed up an opening round 8-under 64 with a 2-under 70 to reach 10-under total, a score matched earlier in the day by McCurdy and set yesterday by Jenkins, who did not play a single hole on Thursday.
“I’m just looking at it as though I played in the afternoon yesterday and the morning today, and I’ll play two more the next few days,” said NeSmith, currently a senior at the University of South Carolina. “Hopefully we’ll get finished with a good bit of play tomorrow, but I don’t know much we will get done. It would be nice to play a good bit tomorrow.”
McCurdy, a graduate of Auburn University, shot his second straight 5-under 67 and said that a pin-seeking approach helped him reach double digits under par.
“I was able to play pretty aggressively. With the wind blowing and some pretty good pins out there, it actually paid to play aggressive, because if you tried to play conservative out there, it was going be tough to get it down in two. There weren’t a lot of places you could hit it and have an easy two-putt or chip.”
Jenkins, a junior at the University of North Carolina, shot a 6-under 66 in round two on Wednesday.
Chris Hemmerich of Kitchener, Ont., had a share of 4th spot at 7-under two rounds.
He was scheduled to tee off for round two late Wednesday before play was called due to darkness. Hemmerich did not hit a shot Wednesday and followed up Tuesday’s 66 in round one with a 1-under 71 on Thursday for round two.
“I warmed up for two-and-a-half hours yesterday to not hit a ball, and today I probably warmed up for an hour-and-a-half and finally got to play, so that was nice,” said Hemmerich, a former Team Canada member. “It’s difficult. Yesterday, I was honestly pretty lucky to not have to hit that tee shot. I came out today with a fresh mindset and approach.”