Jhonattan Vegas stays ahead in PGA Championship as Scottie Scheffler looms large

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Scottie Scheffler wasn't paying attention to all the drama next to him in a star-power group or ahead of him on the leaderboard Friday at the PGA Championship.

Scheffler kept doing his best with the swing he had, responding to his lone bogey with a pair of birdies until he was within striking distance of 36-hole leader Jhonattan Vegas and became a large presence on leaderboard filled with so much inexperience in the majors.

“I like the position I'm in going into the weekend,” Scheffler said after a 3-under 68 left him only three shots behind at Quail Hollow.

Vegas had the lead for the first time in a major and didn't back down. He finished late Thursday with five birdies on his last six holes for a 64 and had what felt like only three hours of sleep. He was tired, but it didn't show until the end.

He missed a 3-foot putt on the 18th hole and took double bogey. He still shot 70, and his lead remained two shots going into the weekend.

“Every chance you get to lead a major and play with the lead is never easy,” Vegas said. “So I feel proud of a solid round today.”

He was at 8-under 134, two ahead of Matthieu Pavon of France (65), former U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick (68) and Si Woo Kim, the engaging South Korean who made an ace on the longest par 3 at Quail Hollow on his way to a 64. Kim hit 5-wood on the 252-yard sixth hole, making it the longest hole-in-one in major championship history.

The real stress was next to Scheffler.

Xander Schauffele was in danger of becoming the first defending champion to miss the cut in the PGA Championship since Jimmy Walker in 2017. He was two shots over the cut line with seven holes to play when he made two birdies and handled the rugged three-hole closing stretch with pars to make the cut on the number.

That's his 64th in a row on the PGA Tour, the longest streak since Tiger Woods made 142 straight cuts from 1998 through 2005.

“The cuts, it's still a thing,” Schauffele said. “And I really wanted to make the weekend because I feel like I'm not playing this bad.”

Masters champion Rory McIlroy had four birdies through 10 holes and the gallery was starting to raise the level of noise. But then he began missing more fairways and making four bogeys, including the 18th hole for a 69 to make the cut on the number.

Turns out XM Sirius PGA Tour Radio reported McIlroy had his driver tested on Tuesday, it was deemed nonconforming and he had to use a backup. He ranks last in driving accuracy among the 74 players to make the cut.

McIlroy, who last month completed the career Grand Slam at the Masters, declined to speak to the media for the second straight day.

Scheffler marched on, hitting his stride late in the round, just like Thursday. He wasn't even aware of McIlroy's early run.

“When you’re out there competing, I’m mostly concerned about myself out there,” Scheffler said. “I notice what’s going on, but it’s not like another sport. Like if we were playing basketball and he’s hitting a bunch of 3s in my face, I’d probably have to adjust.”

The Grand Slam club most likely stays at six members the rest of the year — Jordan Spieth rallied with a 68 but missed the cut by one shot, leaving him a PGA Championship short of getting all the majors.

Phil Mickelson could still win the U.S. Open for the Grand Slam at age 54. He certainly didn't look the part when he took four swipes at the ball to get out of a bunker on No. 12 and wound up with a quadruple-bogey eight. He made seven birdies in a round of 72.

Now it's about 36 holes to chase after the 27-pound Wanamaker Trophy, which might feel even heavier to so many players in the mix who are newcomers to major pressure.

That starts with Vegas, whose career has been slowed by shoulder injuries in recent year. He got back on track by winning in Minnesota last year. Still, he has never finished in the top 20 in a major championship.

Pavon played in the final group of the U.S. Open last year. Fitzpatrick won the toughest test in golf at Brookline three years ago and is pulling out of a bad stretch of play.

A dozen others are relatively new to all this. Scheffler is not among them.

For the second straight day, it took time for the world's No. 1 player to feel comfortable with his swing. All the while, he rarely got out of position and kept inching closer. He dropped only one shot and responded with two straight birdies on the back nine for a 68.

That left Scheffler at 5-under 137 along with Max Homa, who has been struggling with his game everywhere but the majors. He tied for 12th at the Masters, and Homa shot 64 at Quail Hollow, including a drive on the reachable 14th that settled a foot from the hole for eagle.

“Obviously, I wish I was a little bit further up the leaderboard," Scheffler said. "I think I got a lot out of my game the last couple days. I felt like, as the round went on, my swing continued to get better and I was able to hit some key shots down the stretch to give myself some opportunities.”

Ten players were at 4-under 138, a group that included three players who a week ago had no assurance they would be in the field.

Michael Thorbjornsen (70), the former No. 1 player in the PGA Tour University ranking when he was at Stanford, got in when Vijay Singh withdrew. Ryan Fox (71) won at Myrtle Beach last week for his first PGA Tour title, getting him to the PGA Championship.

Alex Smalley (71) didn't get in until Wednesday with another withdrawal. He got within one shot of the lead with three birdies in a four-hole stretch around the turn, and still was two behind until bogeys on the last two holes.

But it starts with Vegas, the affable Venezuelan who already has piled up 13 birdies in two rounds and has 36 holes ahead of him to see if he can lift the trophy.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Matthew Fitzpatrick, of England, chips to the green on the 14th hole during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club, Friday, May 16, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Rory McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, walks on the third hole during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club, Friday, May 16, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Matthieu Pavon, of France, reacts on the 17th hole during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club, Friday, May 16, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Scottie Scheffler hits from the rough on the eighth hole during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club, Friday, May 16, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Matt York)

Jhonattan Vegas, of Venezuela, watches his tee shot on the 17th hole during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club, Friday, May 16, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

BANGKOK (AP) — Iranian demonstrators' ability to get details of bloody nationwide protests out to the world has been given a strong boost, with SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service dropping its fees to allow more people to circumvent the Tehran government's strongest attempt ever to prevent information from spilling outside its borders, activists said Wednesday.

The move by the American aerospace company run by Elon Musk follows the complete shutdown of telecommunications and internet access to Iran's 85 million people on Jan. 8, as protests expanded over the Islamic Republic's faltering economy and the collapse of its currency.

SpaceX has not officially announced the decision and did not respond to a request for comment, but activists told The Associated Press that Starlink has been available for free to anyone in Iran with the receivers since Tuesday and that the company has gone even further by pushing a firmware update to help circumvent government efforts to jam the satellite signals.

The moves by Starlink came two days after President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was going to reach out to Musk to ask for Starlink help for protesters, a call later confirmed by his press secretary, though it's not clear if that is what prompted Musk to act.

“Starlink has been crucial,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian whose nonprofit Net Freedom Pioneers has helped smuggle units into Iran, pointing to video that emerged Sunday showing rows of bodies at a forensic medical center near Tehran.

“That showed a few hundred bodies on the ground, that came out because of Starlink," he said in an interview from Los Angeles. "I think that those videos from the center pretty much changed everyone's understanding of what's happening because they saw it with their own eyes.”

Since the outbreak of demonstrations Dec. 28, the death toll has risen to more than 2,500 people, primarily protesters but also security personnel, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunication regulations, as the country never authorized the importation, sale or use of the devices. Activists fear they could be accused of helping the U.S. or Israel by using Starlink and charged with espionage, which can carry the death penalty.

The first units were smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country's mandatory headscarf law, after Musk got the Biden administration to exempt the Starlink service from Iran sanctions.

Since then, more than 50,000 units are estimated to have been sneaked in, with people going to great lengths to conceal them, using virtual private networks while on the system to hide IP addresses and taking other precautions, said Ahmad Ahmadian, the executive director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organization that was responsible for getting some of the first Starlink units into Iran.

Starlink is a global internet network that relies on some 10,000 satellites orbiting Earth. Subscribers need to have equipment, including an antenna that requires a line of sight to the satellite, so must be deployed in the open, where it could be spotted by authorities. Many Iranians disguise them as solar panels, Ahmadian said.

After efforts to shut down communications during the 12-day war with Israel in June proved to be not terribly effective, Iranian security services have taken more “extreme tactics” now to jam Starlink's radio signals and GPS systems, Ahmadian said in a phone interview. After Holistic Resilience passed on reports to SpaceX, Ahmadian said, the company pushed its firmware update to avoid jamming.

Security services also rely on informers to tell them who might be using Starlink, and search internet and social media traffic for signs it has been used. There have been reports they have raided apartments with satellite dishes.

“There has always been a cat-and-mouse game,” said Ahmadian, who fled Iran in 2012 after serving time in prison for student activism. “The government is using every tool in its toolbox.”

Still, Ahmadian noted that the government jamming attempts had only been effective in certain urban areas, suggesting that security services lack the resources to block Starlink more broadly.

Iran did begin to allow people to call out internationally on Tuesday via mobile phones, but calls from outside the country into Iran remain blocked.

Compared to protests in 2019, when lesser measures by the government were able to effectively stifle information reaching the rest of the world for more than a week, Ahmadian said the proliferation of Starlink has made it impossible to prevent communications. He said the flow could increase now that the service has been made free.

“This time around they really shut it down, even fixed landlines were not working,” he said. “But despite this, the information was coming out, and it also shows how distributed this community of Starlink users is in the country.”

Musk has made Starlink free for use during several natural disasters, and Ukraine has relied heavily on the service since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. It was initially funded by SpaceX and later through an American government contract.

Musk's involvement had raised concerns over the power of such a system being in the hands of one person, after he refused to extend Ukraine's Starlink coverage to support a planned Ukrainian counterattack in Russian-occupied Crimea.

As a proponent of Starlink for Iran, Ahmadian said the Crimea decision was a wake-up call for him, but that he couldn't see any reason why Musk might be inclined to act similarly in Iran.

“Looking at the political Elon, I think he would have more interest ... in a free Iran as a new market,” he said.

Starlink's effort in circumventing Tehran's efforts to shut down communications is being watched closely around the world. The satellite service has expanded rapidly in recent years, securing licenses in more than 120 countries, including some with authoritarian rulers who have persecuted journalists and protesters.

Julia Voo, who heads the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Cyber Power and Future Conflict Program in Singapore, said there is a risk of activists becoming reliant on one company as a lifeline, as it “creates a single point of failure,” though currently there are no comparable alternatives.

China has been exploring ways to hunt and destroy Starlink satellites, and Voo said the more effective Starlink proves itself at penetrating “government-mandated terrestrial blackouts, the more states will be observing.”

“It's just going to result in more efforts to broaden controls over various ways of communication, for those in Iran and everywhere else watching,” she said.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Bernard Condon in New York contributed to this report.

FILE - In this photo obtained by The Associated Press, Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP, file)

FILE - A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket stands ready for launch at pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, June 26, 2020. (AP Photo/John Raoux, file)