LOS CABOS, Mexico — At 41, Camilo Villegas says his memory isn’t what it used to be.
“Don’t ask me my birdies because I don’t remember them,” he joked after the round with a member of the media.
It’s doubly hard for Villegas because he’s made so many birdies, shooting his second straight 64 on Friday at El Cardonal at Diamante, a course designed by Tiger Woods and the host of the PGA Tour’s World Wide Technology Championship.
Competing on a sponsor exemption, Villegas began his second round on Friday with an eagle-birdie-birdie start and finished with three birdies to boot. In doing so, he set his career-low 36-hole score on the Tour with a total of 128, two strokes better than Matt Kuchar and three better than Justin Suh, who made a career-high nine birdies in the second round, and Stephan Jaeger, who aced the 11th hole in the first round.
Villegas also was two strokes better than his previous best start to a Tour event at the 2020 RSM Classic. It marks Villegas’s eighth 36-hole lead and first since the 2010 Honda Classic.
Asked to recall the last time he had such a hot start to a tournament, Villegas showed his memory isn’t totally shot, recalling a Hooters Tour event in Orlando in 2004 that he won by 10 strokes shortly after flaming out of second stage of Q-School.
“I shot 61 first day, 62 the second day,” he said. “It was like a bittersweet win.”
It’s been more than nine years since Villegas, a four-time winner on Tour, has claimed victory and being in the hunt for another title couldn’t come at a better time. He entered the week ranked 223 in the FedEx Cup standings and had missed the cut in his last three starts.
But that was then — this week he’s made so many birdies it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Here are four more thing to know about the second round of the World Wide Technology Championship.
Matt Kuchar of the United States reacts on the fourth green during the second round of the World Wide Technology Championship at El Cardonal at Diamante on November 03, 2023 in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, Mexico. (Photo by Orlando Ramirez/Getty Images)
When Matt Kuchar heard that the WWT Championship was moving from Mayakoba Resort near Cancun to a Tiger Woods-designed course in Cabo, he said, “a little piece of him was sad.”
After all, he was a former champ at El Camaleon in 2018, which fit his game to a T. Turns out he likes this one, too. Kuchar birdied two of his last three…
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