Jahns, Ko carry local fight at Wack Wack
Filipinos Keanu Jahns and Brycen Ko on Friday kept the Philippine Golf Championship leaders within reach, after as Thailand’s Sarut Vongchaisit found company at the top after 36 holes of the $500,000 kickoff leg of the 2026 Asian Tour season.
Jahns returned a second straight one-under-par 71 and Ko, a Filipino Canadian who plays under the PH flag, had three birdies in submitting a 70 at Wack Wack East as both will carry 142 aggregates into the third round to chase Vongchaisit, two South Koreans and Aussie Travis Smyth, who fired an eagle-aided 69.
“The key for me here today was I hit a lot of greens and got a lot of birdie chances,” Ko said. “(In other tournaments in the past) I had a lot of putts that were burning edges (of the cup), maybe I would be a little aggressive to chase those down.
“But in this golf course, it’s very important to stay patient.”
Smyth hit a booming 4-iron for his second shot on the par-5 14th that landed seven feet from the cup for the eagle and he could have had the lead to himself if not for a bogey on the ‘camel back’ 17th green.
“So 17 is arguably one of the hardest par 3’s ever if you miss the green and I hit it in the worst spot possible, which was left,” Smyth, who won on tour in 2022, said. “So I was in the bunker, down slope, greens massively raised. It was a good 4 in the end.”
Wang Jeung-hun and Cho Woo-young fired 70s to make it a four-way tie for the lead as the two Koreans turned in contrasting efforts, with Wang going bogey-free over the tree-lined layout and Cho draining four birdies against two bogeys, one of them a three-putt on the short second hole.
“Today was a very, very tough day,” Cho, who birdied the 17th, said as he holds a share of the lead despite playing this type of course in a tournament for the first time.
“Actually, it’s the first time I play on the cow grass. Yeah, it’s so much different in Korea and in the US, so I just keep trying safe area,” Cho said.
Vongchaisit mixed four birdies with three bogeys in his 71. In a first round 68, he gunned down six birdies against two bogeys.
