Anirban Lahiri shot his best card at the Waialae Country Club with a superb five-under 65 with eight birdies against three bogeys in the second round of the Sony Open in Hawaii.

Lahiri is now six-under for 36 holes and made a smart move to T-35 up from T-72. It also brought a welcome smile on his face as he said, “I was aware that I needed to make a lot of birdies and my intent is there. I'm happy that I caught a couple of shots on the lead.”

Nick Taylor (62) moved into sole lead at 12-under with a two-shot lead over five players at 10-under. The five included 2009 British Open winner, Stewart Cink (63), who won the Safeway Open at the start of 2020-21. Cink, 47, had for company Webb Simpson (65), Russell Henley (64), Vaughn Taylor (66) and Chris Kirk (65).

Lahiri’s previous best at this course was 66 in the final round of 2019, the only time he has made the cut in three previous starts at the Sony Open. Heaving a sigh of relief with the fine card on a course that is affording a lot of good and low scores, Lahiri, whose last worldwide win came at the Hero Indian Open in India in 2015, said, “I quite happy with the way I played (which was) much better than yesterday (Round 1). I applied myself well though it was disappointing to drop three shots. I got over aggressive on one of them and completely mis-clubbed one; just some unforced errors there but overall it was good.”

Lahiri made two big putts, one from 19-feet on the third and then from 36 feet on the 16th. He has also ensured birdies in both Par-5s on both days.

His three bogeys included one on fourth when he went into the greenside bunker and came out alright to 15 feet, but missed par putt. Then on sixth he mis-clubbed his second shot and was left with a 34-footer for par, which he two-putted for bogey. The third bogey was on par-3 11th.

“I was aware that I needed to make a lot of birdies. The goal is to do more of the same going into the weekend and try and minimize the errors and try to keep a clean sheet. Obviously, as everyone can see there's lots of birdies to be made.”

About the weekend, he added, “I don't know what the conditions are going to be, but so far they've been good for scoring. It is going to be important to keep making birdies because the field is going to make a lot of birdies. I'm just focusing on doing the right things and hitting more fairways, setting up, having better looks at birdie and hopefully I can continue to do that on the weekend.”

The season seems to be getting better as it moves along for Cink and his cancer-survivor wife as both have also recovered from COVID-19. Cink’s 7-under 63 is his 126th bogey-free round on Tour. Since the start of the 1996 PGA Tour season, he has the fourth most bogey-free rounds of any player, and the longest active streak of par or better rounds (26) at the Sony Open in Hawaii.

Simpson has the longest active streak of top-20 finishes at the Sony Open in Hawaii entering 2021 (6)

Hideki Matsuyama shot his career-low nine-hole score (28) during his round of 65 and at 9-under 131 he is Tied-7th.

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