SILVIS, Ill. (AP) — As he chatted about his day at the John Deere Classic, Steve Stricker was reminded that he now held the tournament’s 36-hole record.

“So far,” he said with a smile.

Stricker had good reason to be cautious because Paul Goydos, who had sent a buzz through the golf world by shooting only the fourth 59 in PGA Tour history on Thursday, was just starting his round.

But the deft putting touch that had put Goydos in golf’s most exclusive club deserted him Friday and he settled for a 68, leaving him one stroke behind Stricker, the defending champion, heading into Saturday’s third round.

“Reality kicked in today,” Goydos said.

Stricker, who almost matched Goydos with a 60 in Thursday’s round, came back with a solid 5-under par 66 for a two-day total of 126, which is 16 under at the TPC Deere Run. The old 36-hole record was 127 by David Frost in 2000, the first year the tournament was played at Deere Run.

Showing no ill-effects from a shoulder injury that sidelined him for six weeks earlier this year, Stricker overcame a bogey on his fifth hole with accurate approaches that left him with makeable birdie putts.

“It’s always tough to follow up a good round with another good round and for whatever reason, I thought I did a pretty good job of that today,” Stricker said.

Goydos appeared to be on his way to another sizzling round when he birdied his 11th hole, the par-5 No. 2, to go 17 under and move ahead of Stricker by a stroke. Then his game unraveled.

He failed to break par on any of the last seven holes and bogeyed two of them. After needing only 22 putts on Thursday, he slogged through this round with 32, essentially the difference in his scores.

“Yesterday was one of the greatest putting rounds maybe of all time and today was not,” Goydos said. “But that’s not — I think they call it the Sports Illustrated jinx. It’s just a reversion to the norm. Things tend to want to work their way to the center.”

Still, he admitted: “I hit some pretty squirrely short putts coming in.”

Jeff Maggert, Matt Jones and George McNeill were tied at 11-under 131, Maggert and McNeill shooting bogey-free 65s and Jones stumbling in at 67 after bogeying his final two holes.

South African Brendon de Jonge, buoyed by two monster putts, matched those 65s to tie Aaron Baddeley at 10 under.

The course is drying out from rains early in the week and the soft greens that allowed players to attack them so aggressively figure to be slicker this weekend. But it’ll still take low scores to stay in contention, perhaps really low scores.

“I’ve got to figure somewhere around 25 under is probably going to win,” Maggert said. “So I’ve got to keep playing hard to try to shoot six-, seven-under on the weekend.”

Stricker is thinking the same way.

“Low scores are out there, and you’ve got to acknowledge that,” he said. “You’ve got to think somebody could come from behind and shoot a real low one.”

Goydos and Stricker certainly have gone low in the first two rounds.

Stricker finished on a bit of a downer, though. On the par-4 ninth, he sliced his second shot into the bunker right of the green, then looked as though he’d get up and down when he blasted out to 2 feet. But he missed a putt he normally could make with his eyes closed and walked off with a bogey and a bit of a sour feeling.

“Missing a 2-footer doesn’t sit very well right now,” Stricker said.

It could have been worse.

Stricker bogeyed No. 14, a par 4, after he flew the green not once, but twice. All things considered, he was happy to get out of there with a 5.

“If you would have given me a 5 as I’m sitting back there trying to figure out my options, I would have taken it,” he said. “So that was good.”

Later, Stricker salvaged par on No. 4 after almost losing his ball in the tall grass lining the right side of the fairway. He was walking back to the fairway, resigned that his ball was lost, when some keen eyes spotted it.

Rejuvenated, Stricker hacked out and gave himself a 6-footer for par, which he knocked in.

Maggert, who’s been bothered by a sore shoulder most of the year, had failed to make the cut or withdrew from nine of his last 10 tournaments. But he’s playing well this week and fashioned a workmanlike round Friday highlighted by a 37-foot birdie putt on the par-3 third.

“I’ve been struggling putting the ball for the last two months,” he said. “For some reason, all of a sudden, everything is going into the hole. That’s a good problem to have.”

De Jonge, a 29-year-old from Zimbabwe began the day at 4 under. He got off a rousing start by rolling in a 33-foot birdie putt on No. 1, followed with a 44-footer at No. 7, missed an eagle from 46 yards out on No. 17 by less than a foot, then made an 18-footer for birdie on 18.

Goydos didn’t act put off by his round, though he had every right to feel that way because he was missing the kind of birdie putts he had drilled with regularity on Thursday.

A 9-footer for birdie at No. 4 lipped out. On No. 5, he missed a 16-footer for birdie, then botched his par putt from less than 4 feet. Goydos missed birdie putts of 12 and 13 feet on Nos. 6 and 7 and bogeyed No. 8 when he blew a 3-footer.

“Tee to green, I think I was better than I was yesterday,” Goydos said. “That shows you what putting can do. Yesterday, putting kind of carried the day. Today I shot 68 because I hit it so good.”

Goydos dismissed the notion that all the extra attention from Thursday’s stunning round affected his play. He knew many more eyes were watching him Friday, but insisted he felt no pressure from that.

“The world didn’t watch me shoot 59,” he said. “They watched me shoot 68.”

Rain halts play at U.S. Women’s Open

OAKMONT, Pa. — Cristie Kerr didn’t need to sink a long putt to gain a potentially significant advantage in the U.S. Women’s Open, or whip a 290-yard drive down one of Oakmont Country Club’s slender fairways.

No, she only needed it to rain.

A relentless string of thunderstorms that began with 100 of the 156 golfers still to begin or complete the second round caused play to be suspended at mid-afternoon Friday. Twenty-eight of the 31 golfers who were within three shots of the lead had played only a few holes or hadn’t teed off.

Except for Kerr, the world’s No. 1 player, and first-round leader Brittany Lang, who shared the not-very-crowded clubhouse lead at 1-over 143. Sophie Gustafson was at even par, but she had 17 holes left in her round.

Kerr finished her even-par 71 before the pelting rains flooded Oakmont’s famed Church Pew bunkers and saturated its super-fast greens. Those greens were beginning to turn a Cleveland Browns-like shade of brown — never a welcomed sight in Steelers-mad Pittsburgh — following four consecutive days of 90-degree weather.

Lang slid from a first-round 69 to a 3-over 74 as temperatures went down but the scores didn’t, with Christina Kim a shot back at 2-over 144 following successive 72s.

“We had a very dry course, and it can take a lot of rain,” said the USGA’s Mike Davis, who is confident that improving weather will allow the biggest event in women’s golf to finish on schedule Sunday night.

But can Oakmont take a lot of Kerr? Epecially now that she’ll play probably less than a full round on Saturday, rather than one full round and most of a second as many will?

Kerr was the undisputed favorite to win her second Women’s Open in four years — she also won in 2007 — after winning the LPGA Championship two weeks ago by an unprecedented 12 shots. Only a week’s break between majors gives her a chance to maintain her confidence and, arguably, the mental edge she owns over the other golfers.

Taking on 108-year-old Oakmont, its Stimpmeter-busting greens and fabled hazards is difficult enough in a tournament where the leaders may have already seen the last of below-par scores. Taking on Kerr when she’s on her game may be equally rough, even if 21 golfers go into Saturday morning within two shots of the lead.

“You kind of, you know, sit in the weeds and wait, wait to kind of strike,” Kerr said.

She was referring to the patience needed for Oakmont to yield some birdies, rather than trying to force them on a course where Angel Cabrera’s winning score for the 2007 U.S. Open was 5 over.

Inadvertently, she might been referring to her strategy for taking on the rest of a field that may be beyond fatigued once a very long Saturday is over. Play is scheduled to resume at 7:30 a.m. EDT Saturday, with the third round set for 2:30 p.m.

The leaders won’t start the third round until approximately 5:30 p.m. Saturday and will finish Sunday morning. That means Kerr might play only 12 holes or so Saturday, compared to 36 for the less fortunate.

Those playing all or most of their second rounds in the morning, including Gustafson, Kristy McPherson and two-time Women’s Open champion Karrie Webb, gain the advantage of softer greens and, thus, a friendlier putting surface.

Conversely, the course will play longer because it’s wetter, and that could result in some bad lies that the fast, firm Oakmont didn’t produce until the rain fell.

“The water, it’s going to make it play extremely long,” Lang said. “I don’t know how this course drains, but it’s going to play extremely long and soft.”

Kerr, much like her bumpy first round, was streaky Friday. She had a double bogey and two bogeys in a span of four holes during her first nine, which began on No. 10, but she recovered with three consecutive birdies from No. 4 through No. 6.

“You have to take opportunities when you have them for birdie and make them and get some momentum going, and that’s what I did on the front,” Kerr said.

Now, Kerr hopes to take advantage of much more rest than many others in a field already worn by taking on tough old Oakmont in near-tropical heat. At least temperatures will moderate the rest of the tournament, with highs predicted in the low 80s rather than the low 90s.

“You have to have the patience of a saint this week on this golf course,” Kerr said.

Especially when a golfer must wait 28 hours between taking shots, as she will.

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