McKINNEY, Texas (AP) — Jordan Spieth could only watch a year ago as good buddy Scottie Scheffler became the first of the two to win the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, the hometown event they both cherish.
Spieth is giving himself a good chance to answer.
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Taylor Moore watches his tee shot on the eighth hole during the first round of the Byron Nelson golf tournament in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Scottie Scheffler, right, and Si Woo Kim, of South Korea, cross a bridge between holes during the first round of the Byron Nelson golf tournament in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)932944
Sungjae Im, of South Korea, waves on the 10th green during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at Aronimink Golf Club, Friday, May 15, 2026, in Newtown Square, PA. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Jordan Spieth looks up as he walks from the 11th tee box during the first round of the Byron Nelson golf tournament in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
The three-time major winner started his back nine — the front side of TPC Craig Ranch — with six consecutive birdies on the way to a 9-under 62 in the second round Friday.
Spieth is one shot behind playing partner Sungjae Im, who aced the par-3 seventh moments after Spieth's sixth birdie in a row and shot 61. The South Korean was tied for the early second-round lead at 13-under 129 with Japan's Kensei Hirata.
Scheffler started at 5 under in an afternoon pairing with Brooks Koepka, who opened with a 63 and is looking for his first victory since his return to the PGA Tour from LIV Golf.
Tyler Duncan shot 66 to join Spieth at 12 under, one stroke ahead of first-round leader Taylor Moore, who followed his opening 62 with a 69.
Spieth credited a par 4 at No. 18 for setting up his birdie binge, which started with a 12-footer. He hit the first four fairways after struggling off the tee on his first nine, made a 12-footer at the par-3 fourth, a 4-footer on the par-5 fifth and capped the surge from 9 feet on the sixth.
After Spieth put his tee 29 feet right of a pin to the far left at No. 7, Im bounced his 222-yard shot between the fringe and the hole and watched it roll in, raising his arms and looking skyward after the ball dropped out of sight. The 28-year-old was tied for the lead at that point.
“That was one of the prettiest hole-in-ones I’ve ever seen,” Spieth said. “Prettier than any one I ever made. There’s only a few people that would land that left of it on purpose. He might be one of them.”
Spieth's birdie run ended when his 29-footer at No. 7 came up about a foot short, while Im added another eagle with a 14-foot putt at the par-5 ninth. Spieth finished a bogey-free round with a birdie on No. 9. Im had a bogey and seven birdies to go along with his hole-in-one and eagle.
“I was hurting my head trying to figure out what our best ball was,” Spieth said. “I think it was 57, which is pretty good.”
Spieth, who contended on Sunday as a 16-year-old high schooler at his first Nelson in 2010, finished fourth a year ago when Scheffler won by eight at 31 under while tying the tour's 72-hole scoring record of 253.
The 32-year-old Spieth with 13 tour victories was actually worried about the cutline when he was 5 under at the turn. Then he went on to match his career best at the Nelson from the final round last year.
“Just a lot of it just comes down to knocking in putts,” he said. “It’s not a normal week, and it’s fantastic. Now that our families have grown and stuff, you get the little kids coming out, and it makes it even better.”
Hirata, a six-time Japanese tour winner looking for his first PGA Tour victory, followed a 64 that included an eagle with a bogey-free 65. A short birdie putt on the ninth pulled him even with Im.
The 25-year-old Hirata had missed the cut in five of his previous seven starts this season.
“Every week, even some bad weeks, I learn to not give up,” Hirata said. “Just don’t give up. Just give some chance. Yeah, just keep going.”
Spieth has been telling himself the same thing for 16 years in a beloved event he probably thought he would have won by now.
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Taylor Moore watches his tee shot on the eighth hole during the first round of the Byron Nelson golf tournament in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Scottie Scheffler, right, and Si Woo Kim, of South Korea, cross a bridge between holes during the first round of the Byron Nelson golf tournament in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)932944
Sungjae Im, of South Korea, waves on the 10th green during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at Aronimink Golf Club, Friday, May 15, 2026, in Newtown Square, PA. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Jordan Spieth looks up as he walks from the 11th tee box during the first round of the Byron Nelson golf tournament in McKinney, Texas, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
BUNIA, Congo (AP) — Authorities in northeastern Congo banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people Friday in an effort to curb a rapidly spreading Ebola outbreak in a region where medical workers have struggled with a lack of resources and pushback from angry residents.
The World Health Organization said that the outbreak now poses a “very high" risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in Congo, but that the outbreak is believed to be “much larger."
There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, which spread undetected for weeks in Congo's Ituri Province following the first known death while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative. There are now 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, though more are expected as surveillance expands.
“We are trying to catch up,” Congo Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner told the AP. “It is a race against the clock."
Supplies were being rushed to Ituri in the northeastern corner of the country, where nearly a million people have been displaced by armed conflicts over mineral resources. Ramping up contact tracing is a priority, Kayikwamba Wagner said.
In the provincial capital of Bunia, AP reporters saw empty emergency treatment centers, and doctors in the nearby town of Bambu using expired medical masks while tending to suspected Ebola patients.
The provincial government said Friday it was temporarily banning wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people. It said funerals must be conducted in strict compliance with health protocols. The authorities also required journalists to obtain a permit to report on the outbreak, impeding their work.
The illness also has been reported in two Congolese provinces to the south of Ituri — North Kivu and South Kivu, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group controls many key cities, including Goma and Bukavu, where the rebels reported two cases.
The group said Friday it was creating a crisis team to fight the outbreak.
Kayikwamba Wagner said having the illness in rebel-held areas was alarming because “M23 is, despite whatever ambitions they may have, thoroughly ill equipped" to fight the disease.
She said the Congo government and rebels were not communicating on the outbreak.
The efforts of health officials and aid groups have met with pushback from communities due to misinformation or situations where medical policy has clashed with local customs such as burial rites.
On Thursday, an Ebola treatment center in Rwampara was set on fire by youths who were angered when they were blocked from retrieving the body of a friend who apparently had died of Ebola, according to witnesses and police.
The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, because the bodies can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when they are prepared for burial or when people gather for funerals.
Julienne Lusenge, president of Women’s Solidarity for Inclusive Peace and Development, a local aid group, said the population’s anger is mostly due to misinformation. “We have lived through years and years of conflict and hardship so rumors spread easily,” she said.
She said some churches have told their congregations the outbreak is fake and that divine protection makes medical care unnecessary.
In the Ituri province mining town of Mongbwalu where the outbreak is believed to have originated, Lokana Moro Faustin lost his 16-year-old daughter to the disease and bemoaned the fact that he was not able to give her a proper goodbye because of Ebola restrictions.
“At first, we thought it was malaria. But then came vomiting, a high fever, nosebleeds, and bloody diarrhea,” he said, grief-stricken.
The teenager died on May 15 and her body was taken from the hospital by specialized teams and taken directly to the cemetery for a secure burial. Faustin was not able to say goodbye because he was in self-isolation, and it pained him to have his daughter buried by people who were not family.
In Bunia, coffin workshop manager Christian Djakisa said demand has soared since the outbreak began. “We're here every hour making coffins,” he said.
The United Nations said Friday it released $60 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund to accelerate the response in Congo and in the region.
The U.S. has pledged $23 million in funding to bolster the response in Congo and Uganda, and said it would also fund the establishment of up to 50 Ebola treatment clinics in the affected regions.
Lusenge said her group’s small hospital near in Bunia lacks basic protective equipment, exposing nurses and doctors to possible infection, she said. “We only have hand sanitizer and a few masks for the nurses, but we need much more than that," Lusenge said.
Public health officials say that a person infected with Ebola generally passes the virus along to one to two other people — which is less contagious than measles, whooping cough and chickenpox, in which one person can infect around a dozen others.
But researchers note that transmission rates have varied in past Ebola outbreaks, and they are still trying to determine how contagious the Bundibugyo virus is.
Both the WHO and Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believe the outbreak is larger than the cases reported so far.
The region’s already-weak health infrastructure and surveillance capacity has been further weakened by international aid cuts, experts say. The International Rescue Committee said it had to stop its surveillance activities in three out of five areas in Ituri over the last year because of funding cuts.
Armed conflict in the region further complicates efforts to handle the crisis. To get from Bunia to Mongbwalu, aid groups have to brace for potential attacks from armed groups.
“The outbreak can still be contained but the window for action is narrow,” Gabriela Arenas from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said Friday.
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Pronczuk reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Jamey Keaten in Geneva; Constant Same Bagalwa in Bunia, Congo; Jean Yves Kamale in Kinshasa, Congo; Jonathan Poet in Philadelphia; Mark Banchereau and Wilson McMakin in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
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David Zaki, 19, makes a coffin at a carpentry shop in Bunia, Congo, Friday, May 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
Djakisa Christian, 18, a funeral home manager, sits in front of coffins for sale at his shop in Bunia, Congo, Friday, May 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
Charred hospital beds stand in smoldering Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026, after it was set fire by people angry at being stopped from retrieving a body, according to a witness and police. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
Flames and smoke rise from an Ebola treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Dirole Lotsima Dieudonne)
Medical staff carry an Ebola patient to a treatment center in Rwampara, Congo, Thursday, May 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
A person is wearing a protective face mask in front of the WHO logo, during the media regarding the epidemic of Ebola disease, during a press conference at the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, May 22, 2026. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP)
