By DOUG FERGUSON AP Golf Writer

TULSA, Okla. — The Oklahoma wind came sweeping through Southern Hills and then swiftly left town in time for Will Zalatoris, Bubba Watson and yes, even Tiger Woods, to bring a sleepy PGA Championship to life on Friday.

Zalatoris hit the ball on the button whether he was in the fairway or the rough, running off three straight birdies in gentler afternoon conditions for a 4-under-par 66 and a one-shot lead over Mito Pereira of Chile.

Pereira missed a 7-foot putt on his final hole and had to settle for 64.

About an hour later, Watson missed a birdie putt from just inside 25 feet on the 18th hole and still delivered the 18th round of 63 in PGA Championship history.

Woods wasn’t that spectacular, yet no less compelling. Outside the cut line with seven holes to play, he made a pair of 15-foot par putts and two birdies on his battered right leg for a 69 to make the cut in his second straight major.

He’s still 12 shots behind Zalatoris, the 25-year-old from Dallas who is built like a 1-iron and could probably hit one flush with his eyes closed. Zalatoris, a premier ball-striker, was quick to acknowledge that timing was everything.

“We lucked out with the draw, for sure,” he said. “I played the last eight holes with not much wind. But take it when you can get it.”

His side of the draw faced the least of the wind on Thursday morning and Friday afternoon, and it showed. Of the 22 players under par going into the weekend, only five had to endure the worst of Oklahoma’s notorious wind.

Justin Thomas concentrated on every shot, even short putts, in gusts that topped 30 mph in the morning and he was rightly proud of another 67 that put him atop the leaderboard. And then he could only watch from the couch of his rental home as the trees stopped swaying, the flags stopped whipping and birdies kept dropping.

Now it’s 36 more holes of more wild weather – temperatures in the low 60s for Saturday with a strong chance of some rain – and an even playing field.

Zalatoris was at 9-under 131, the lowest 36-hole score in eight majors at Southern Hills, and will be in the final group with Pereira. Neither has won on the PGA Tour.

“I think it was lucky to get that draw,” Pereira said. “Sometimes you get the bad draw, sometimes you get the good one. But today for sure the wind in the back nine, there was almost none.”

Thomas was at 6-under 134, with Watson another shot behind.

Rory McIlroy was on the good side of the draw and failed to take advantage. He didn’t make a birdie until the 13th hole. That was his only one in a round of 71, though three par saves at the end kept him within five of the lead.

“There’s a long way to go, a lot of golf left,” McIlroy said. “We’re going to see a completely different golf course the next two days because of the wind direction. It’s going to play completely differently. And that makes it very interesting.”

Jordan Spieth, playing alongside McIlroy and Woods, finally got back to even par for the tournament until driving into the water on the 18th for a bogey and a 69. He was 10 shots behind in his bid to get the major keeping him from the career Grand Slam.

Zalatoris has some history at Southern Hills, winning the Trans-Mississippi Amateur in 2014 when the final two rounds were washed out by rain. His game works well here, and it showed.

He opened with a shot from the rough that tumbled across the length of the green to 2 feet. He hit another through a gap in the trees to 7 feet. Not only did he have a bogey-free card, but all five of his birdies were from inside 8 feet.

Zalatoris has plenty of experience in the majors. He was runner-up in the Masters to Hideki Matsuyama in his debut in 2021. This is his eighth major, and he already has four top 10s.

“They’re tough golf courses that allow my ball-striking to really give me the best chances,” he said. “Obviously, these greens aren’t easy, but hitting them on the right tiers and being able to have the 15- to 25-footers where I’m not going up and down slopes is huge.”

The weekend will not include Masters champion Scottie Scheffler, who stumbled badly down the stretch and finished with a double bogey for a 75 to miss the cut – 4-over par – by two.

Jon Rahm thought he might have worked his way back into the mix with a 69 to get to 2-over 142, and he was skeptical about the forecast of wind abating.

“They said the wind was going to go down this afternoon. No, it’s not. It’s Oklahoma,” Rahm said. “It’s going to stay just as windy as we had.”

If only.

Watson had never scored better than 68 in his previous 49 rounds in the PGA Championship. And then he dropped nine birdies and goes into the weekend with a chance. Woods in the 2007 PGA and Raymond Floyd in the 1982 PGA were the others with a 63 at Southern Hills. Both went on to win.

“Without the heat, the cloud cover made it a little bit softer. But when that wind died down, you just felt like you had a chance to score,” Watson said.

Woods looked to be headed home after his double bogey on the par-3 11th, where he went from the high grass framing a stream to the bunker on the other side of the green. And then he saved par from a bunker on No. 12, hit wedge to 4 feet for birdie on the par-5 13th, saved par with another 15-footer on the next hole and hit his best shot on the 16th to 4 feet.

“I had to go grind and go to work, and I did,” Woods said. “Hopefully, I can get a hot weekend and you never know.”

WAYWARD TEE SHOTS HIT PLAYER, ESPN ANCHOR

Some of the intrigue heading into this tournament had to do with the compact nature of the grand old layout, where greens are often so close to tees that players get in logjams waiting for each other.

Turned out it was two relatively wide-open areas of the course where noteworthy people got hit.

In one case, it was one contender hitting another player.

That happened on the par-4 second hole Friday when Cameron Smith, fresh off a birdie to open his round, hit a wild tee shot that sailed over the trees and into the seventh fairway. The ball wound up striking Aaron Wise, who had opened with a 69 and was on his way toward a second-round 72 that left him 1 over for the championship.

Wise, who was seen holding a water bottle on top of his noggin, managed to par the seventh hole. He also parred the long par-3 eighth before making bogey from the bunker on the final hole and heading in for some treatment.

Wise’s management team said he was doing well and expected to play Saturday.

Smith wound up shooting 70 on Friday and was 2 under for the tournament.

Meanwhile, ESPN anchor Sage Steele was flying home to Connecticut on Friday after she was struck in the face by Rahm’s tee shot and needed medical attention during the opening round of the tournament.

Steele was covering the PGA for “SportsCenter” and was finished for the day, so she headed onto the course to watch Rahm’s grouping with Collin Morikawa and Scottie Scheffler. That’s when Rahm hooked his shot and, despite frantically waving to warn fans in that direction, the ball hit Steele near her nose and mouth about 280 yards away.

Steele, who also has hosted “SportsCenter” from the Masters, is expected to make a full recovery.

HEADED HOME

For the second time in three years, no club professionals made the cut at the PGA Championship.

The closest was Matthew Borchert, the pro at Isleworth in Windermere, Florida, who followed up his first-round 73 with 74 on Friday. That left him 7-over par and three above the cut line, which landed at plus 4.

Jesse Mueller, an assistant coach at Grand Canyon University, had the best round among the 20 club pros when he holed out for eagle on his first hole and shot 72 on Thursday. Mueller shot 78 on Friday.

HAZARDOUS STUFF

There’s a reason bunkers are considered hazards: They’re supposed to be hard. Yet most pros are so proficient out of the sand that they sometimes prefer hitting there rather than into the rough that surrounds the green.

The bunkers at Southern Hills have been causing some problems, though.

“The individual grains of sand, they’re huge compared to the norm,” said Talor Gooch, who holed out from a bunker in the first round. “I was not trying to land that in the hole; I got really, really fortunate there. It’s a little bit of a guessing game, and a little bit of just good fortune. I think that’s why they’re a hazard. That’s just part of the game.”

WILD RIDE

Joaquin Niemann shot a second-round 71 to leave him 1 under for the championship, but the way he got there was anything but ordinary. His round Friday included five birdies and six bogeys to go with seven pars.

Niemann, one of a record six Latin American players in the field, started on the back side and birdied two of his first three holes. But it was a rollercoaster from there for the Chilean, who had a stretch of three bogeys on the front bookended by a couple of birdies. The last came on the difficult par-4 ninth, Niemann’s final hole of the day.

“You think you are in control and then one hole to another, one bad swing, and it – all the way around, it gets a lot harder,” he said. “The course is super hard. You start missing drivers, getting out of the rough, it’s not easy to make pars.”

MOW NO!

The greens were not mowed ahead of Friday’s round, which probably was a good idea given the windy conditions, but it also caused problems for some players who had grown accustomed to their slick surfaces in the opening round.

Several in morning groups left putts that would have been close Thursday well short of the hole, and by the afternoon, Will Zalatoris cried out after a missed putt that “they’re like Velcro.”

“They can’t get that fast anyway just because they’re pretty slopey, but I don’t think these green surfaces are the smoothest to begin with,” Brooks Koepka said. “And then after not mowing them, you see a little of a trample effect and everything, so it’ll be nice to have some fresh greens this weekend.”

AP sports writer Dave Skretta contributed.