Staff WriterIf you were looking for someone to set fire to the scoreboards at the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship, Calum Hill just turned up with a flamethrower and a putter. The Scot ripped round Royal Golf Club in a career-best 61, tying the course record and strolling into the weekend with a four-shot lead at 16-under-par, as if low scoring were the dress code in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
This wasn’t so much a round of golf as it was a 4D video game. Hill made 11 birdies – five of them in his last six holes – and somehow managed to miss out on a $70,000 bonus for beating the course record presented by Nexo by a single shot. Somewhere, Brandon Robinson Thompson, the man who set the target last year, must have felt a faint, chilly breeze across his name on that honour board.
Hill’s 61: Birdies, bonus putts and a near-miss on $70,000
In his 140th DP World Tour start, Hill finally got one of those mornings where the golf gods stop sniggering and start nodding approvingly. With the Royal Golf Club playing benign – or at least as benign as a desert layout with water and wind can be – he bolted out of the gates with five birdies on the front nine, added six more on the back, and barely left a blemish on the card.
Two putts from more than 30 feet at the 16th and 17th were the sort of things that make your playing partners reconsider their career choices. For Hill, they were merely confirmation he was in that rare, shimmering place where the hole looks like a manhole cover.
“Today was really good. I started off really well and then I had a few bonus putts from really long range to really go in and it just kept making birdies. It was nice. That’s obviously my best round in competitive golf, in tournament golf. I haven’t kept track of what I’ve shot in practice, but I think that’s up there as one of the best rounds I’ve played.
I knew the course record was 11 under, so I knew I needed to hole my last shot (to break the course record) and it looked very good in the air. I thought it had a chance but just long, but it was nice to finish off with a birdie as well. Very happy.
Just to try to hit it on land (Hill’s focus on the 18th tee). The final two holes are not the nicest of tee shots. We’ve played them strategically shorter than maybe some other people in the field and just left a longer iron in. So I hit 5 wood off the tee but it was down the middle, and then a 9 iron in.
The forecast looked like it was going to be windy this morning, but we did okay. It was maybe 10 miles an hour for most of it, and it’s just started to pick up now a little bit. We had it quite windy yesterday, so it felt much easier yesterday as a whole, and it’s nice having the last few holes down wind. It played in our favour, I felt like today wasn’t too bad and we took advantage of that.
Yesterday felt equally as good, I just made a few little errors. I had a few bonus putts go in today and took out what I did wrong yesterday. As long as I can keep learning from what I’ve done and just keep applying it, hopefully I’ve got some good rounds still left in me.”
For a man already carrying the 2025 Joburg Open and 2021 Cazoo Classic in his luggage, this felt like a statement – the kind you write in bold, underline twice, and leave on everyone else’s locker door. Hill’s four-shot cushion is the sort of lead that looks comfortable on a leaderboard and utterly terrifying if you’re the one trying to chase it down over the weekend at the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship.
Schott stalking in second after sparkling 67
Closest to Hill’s vapour trail is Germany’s Freddy Schott, who added a second-round 67 to his opening 65 to reach 12-under-par. If Hill turned Royal into an arcade game, Schott played it like a seasoned speed-runner – five birdies, two bogeys and an eagle making up a quietly lethal round.
The 24-year-old started with a chip-in on the first, a lovely way of saying “good morning” to your group, then eagled the 14th to keep himself in the same postcode as the leader.
“I really enjoyed playing today. My putting was good, so I’m looking forward to the weekend now. I just went out and tried to do the same thing as yesterday. It worked out well. I had a good start to the round with a chip in on one and got the flow a bit. I made a good eagle on 14. I feel good. I enjoy Bahrain. It’s a very, very nice track, especially if the wind picks up, it’s cool to play and it’s very enjoyable. The whole game is positive – putting, I’m good off the tee, so I can take a lot of positives into the weekend and try to get it rolling again.”
Schott may be four back, but with a putter that seems to have woken up on the right side of the hotel room, he looks like Hill’s most immediate problem heading into the final two rounds.
Coussaud closes late as Royal Golf Club bares its teeth
Behind the leading duo, Ugo Coussaud produced the sort of back-nine finish that tournament directors dream about. Starting on the 10th, the Frenchman picked up five shots, including back-to-back birdies to close, and limited the damage to just one bogey en route to nine-under-par and solo third.
He’s three behind Schott, seven adrift of Hill, and still very much in the conversation if Royal Golf Club decides to trade its hospitable mood for something more vindictive over the weekend.
Further down the board, the leaderboard looks like an international conference of low-scoring opportunists. Eleven players share fourth place on eight-under-par: South African trio JC Ritchie, Casey Jarvis and Brandon Stone; Spain’s Sergio Garcia, Nacho Elvira and Alejandro Del Rey; Dutchman Joost Luiten; India’s Shubhankar Sharma; New Zealand’s Daniel Hillier; Frenchman Julien Guerrier; and Italy’s Andrea Pavan. If you plotted them on a map, you’d need a bigger wall.
At that kind of bunching, one hot front nine at the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship and you can vault from mid-pack to serious contender before the TV broadcast has finished its intro montage.
Sergio Garcia shakes off the rust with a 66
Speaking of contenders, Sergio Garcia is doing that Sergio thing where he looks vaguely displeased with his swing and simultaneously shoots a number that would make most professionals hug strangers.
The Spaniard signed for a 66 that came alive around the turn, even while insisting the engine isn’t quite humming yet.
“It was nice to get going there, from nine onwards. I was struggling a little bit, obviously a little bit rusty. I hit some really nice shots, that was nice to see. I still didn’t feel amazing with my swing, so I still need to keep improving for sure, but I’m very happy to shoot 66.
When you make a bogey, it’s always nice to birdie the next if you can. I was able to do that today a couple of times, and then I got going on the back nine and made a couple of really nice saves. I’m very happy with the way the day went.
The course was playing totally different today. The wind was playing different; it was blowing pretty much the opposite way. Some of the holes early on, they were playing very long, they were very tough – holes like four and two. Some of those holes were playing very challenging, so I’m glad I was able to scrape through those not too badly and I took advantage when the wind calmed down a little bit.
I can hopefully just keep playing well. Hopefully I have a tiny bit more confidence here and there and when I don’t hit a good shot, try to make a good save like I did today. We’ll see.”
Garcia’s assessment doubles as a neat summary of Royal Golf Club’s personality: the wind shifts, the course flips, and holes that looked friendly yesterday suddenly demand three good swings and a small prayer.
Wind, darkness and a stacked weekend ahead
Not everyone managed to get home before the lights went out. Five players will have to drag themselves out for an early alarm call to complete their second rounds on Saturday morning at 7:45 a.m. local time, after play was suspended due to darkness at 5:30 p.m. You know you’ve had a long day at the office when the desert sky taps you on the shoulder and says, “That’s enough now.”
For Hill, though, the day could hardly have gone better. He navigated the trickiest closing stretch with the simple game plan of “hit it on land”, leaned on a 5-wood and a 9-iron where others reached for drivers, and turned a potentially hazardous finish into yet another birdie.
As the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship heads into the weekend, the script is delicately poised: Hill with a four-shot edge and a putter on a hot streak; Schott, Coussaud and that mob on eight-under lying in wait; Garcia quietly sharpening the rust off his swing while still throwing 66s at the scoreboard.
If Hill has “got some good rounds still left in me”, as he suggests, the rest of the field might want to find something extraordinary of their own – and quickly.
