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| - Li Haotong, who is trying to become the first player from China to win a men's major title, fired a bogey-free 65 Friday to seize the second round clubhouse lead at the PGA Championship. China's No. 1 is hoping his solid play this week in San Francisco will revive the form that catapulted him to the upper echelons of golf with a third-place finish at the 2017 British Open. "The last couple of days I've been pretty much all hitting in the right spot," said Li, who turned 25 on Monday. "Even if I miss the green, I still got a chance for an up-and-down." In 2012, Feng Shanshan made history by becoming the first player from China to win a major when she captured the women's PGA Championship. Li has two victories on the European Tour and his best result in a PGA Championship was 36th in 2019. Asked what it is going to take for him to become the first male to win a major, Li said he needs to drive the ball straight. "Well, I still got two rounds left. A long way to go. I just want to play my best. If it happens, it happens. "I think the key on this course, you just need to hit as many fairways as you can, and especially putting and short game is quite important." The conditions were challenging Friday morning as the sun finally came out after several days of marine fog, but the winds also starting whipping around the TPC Harding Park course. Li's scorecard consisted of five birdies, including four on the front nine. He has just one bogey through the initial 36 holes of the first major championship since the coronavirus first struck in China and then ravaged the United States. Li got off to a hot start by making birdie on his first two holes, including a long 22-foot putt on the par-four number two. On the first hole, Li blasted a 90-yard approach shot out of the rough to just three feet and then tapped in for a birdie. He also had back-to-back birdies at the turn making putts of 12 feet on No. 9 and three feet on No. 10 for his only birdie on a par-five. Last year, Li could only manage two top-10 finishes and also lost his two matches at the Presidents Cup in Melbourne in December, which soured his debut as the first Chinese mainland golfer to qualify for the International Team. Li, who is from Dalian, said none of his family members have been affected by COVID-19 which has killed 4,680 people in China, says Johns Hopkins University. In December, he donated some of his golf earnings to help out with the health and safety measures in Hubei which is the hardest hit area of the country. "No, no one has had that. But I just felt bad for my country because so many guys got that. I just want everything to get better as quick as we can expect," he said. gph/rcw
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