Lingmerth leads at the PGA but Spieth has made his move

Piercy has two birdies over his first five holes and now shares the lead with Johnson at 6 under par.

If Johnson continues to play well at the US PGA Championship, it would be considered a long road back, by most accounts, for the 31-year-old, who has battled injuries in recent years and even a short time away from the tour in 2014 for personal reasons.

Jordan Spieth had backed Rory McIlroy to pile the pressure on Dustin Johnson when the US PGA Championship resumed on Friday, but it was the world number two who climbed the leaderboard at Whistling Straits.

“I felt good out there today”, said world number five Day, who tied for 10th on his PGA Championship debut at Whistling Straits in 2010.

McIlroy could lose his top ranking to Spieth, depending on how the rest of the weekend plays out. Johnson tees off later in the day. Last month, he started the British Open with another 65.

It was here in 2010, of course, that he grounded his club on scrub at the last after failing to recognise it as a bunker when leading by a stroke. Neither his reputation nor his psyche can sustain many more meltdowns, despite his relentlessly upbeat protestations to the contrary. It’s only the first round.

Johnson, who the German athletic company hopes will help its ailing golf business, claimed an early lead at the US PGA Championship Thursday. And, as always, he made some memories along the way. He had a chance to break the best-round record on the final hole, but his chip shot just veered off to the right, and he tapped in for par. It doesn’t take much to leave safety on this course, and Johnson went from the left rough to the right rough before getting to the green on 13.

So, too, was McIlroy, who despite starting and ending with a bogey, touched the heights in between. The wedge shot came from 40 feet off the green, took two hops and then rolled into the cup to put him at 2 under. I feel good. “It was a solid round”, McIlroy said.

“It was nice to get that opening tee shot out of the way”, said McIlroy, whose return from a torn ligament couldn’t have come in a brighter spotlight. I made a few here and there but I gave myself plenty of chances to shoot five or six under par, then I finished by losing two shots. I think anything under par this afternoon was a decent score. “I got into a little bit of a funk, but started playing a little bit better on the back nine”. McIlroy shot a 71 for the second day in a row to put himself at 2-under, still close enough to make a run.

“I was kind of glad that we’re in”, he said. He seems 100 per cent ready.

His coach, Butch Harmon, said there was going to be no holding him back.

The Campbellsville native and University of Kentucky product bogeyed just once, at the Par 4 eighth, before a rocky finish to his back nine that also included five birdies.

The fireworks were, however, largely a thing of the morning when Johnson played like the champion he has so often promised to be.