By Matt Smith
Charl Schwartzel put on quite a show for the second day running at the inaugural LIV Golf Invitational Series event at Centurion Club outside London on Friday.

The South African 2011 Masters champion has not won a tournament since 2016, but he is on course to have the most historic piece of golf timing with a record-breaking $25 million in prize money on the line, and $4 million going to the winner alone.

MORE: LIV Golf Day 2 as it happened
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Schwartzel led a South African 1-2 show in his nine-under wire-to-wire day on Friday, as Hennie Du Plessis is in second spot, three strokes back on six-under.

The pair traded birdies and bogies all day in St Albans before the more experienced Schwartzel put a bit of daylight between himself and Du Plessis over the last few holes.

The action was relentless all over the course thanks to the events innovative shotgun start, with all 48 players teeing off out on course at the same time, and the course bared its teeth for the second day in a row too, with only six players currently under par for the tournament.

Indeed, some, such as Andy Ogletree and Thailand’s Itthipat Buranatanyarat will be comforting themselves with a guaranteed hefty pay day, with no cut in the three-day competition — American Ogletree is propping up the leaderboard on a whopping 19-over par but, if he is still there come Saturday evening, he will still walk away with $120,000.

Peter Uihlein and Oliver Bekker round out the top rour on four-under and three-under respectively, with the likes of Phil Mickelson, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia toiling somewhat in the Hertfordshire summer sunshine.

On a day when Bryson DeChambeau was  confirmed as the latest big name to sign up for the LIV Golf series — despite the PGA Tour moving to suspend any of its players that compete in the Saudi-backed tournament — the Centurion Club was transformed into a festival, with thousands of fans pouring into the venue to watch the action.

“I think we saw today that this is a series that has delivered on its promises and is here to stay and help change the game of golf for us the players and the fans,” said Martin Kaymer following his round of 70 left him on four-over in T26 position.

“I have been offered a great opportunity here. We need to focus on the game of golf. It doesn’t matter where you play.

In my opinion, it does help the sport. If some tours take it personal, that’s their issue, I guess. I don’t see why they should because we should focus on main and the big picture, and the game of golf that we promote. It doesn’t matter where you play in the world, it’s the greatest sport out there, I believe. There’s no reason to continue to get upset, I guess.”

Branden Grace, who is on the same Stingers team as both Schwartzel and Du Plessis, was delighted with the duo’s performances. The Stingers lead the LIV Golf team event on a collective 15-under from Peter Uihlein’s Crushers team.

“There weren’t too many screens out on the course to check the team scores,” Grace said. “Every time a checked, they were showing the individual standings, and it was hard to keep up with my teammates. But I saw that two of our main guys that were on leaderboard yesterday, they kept on playing well today.

“We are heading the right direction obviously with one day today. Tomorrow is an important day with three scores to count so that mixes things up a little bit.”

“There’s three scores, so anything can happen,” Uihlein added. “It’ll still be tough to mount a comeback, but it’ll be fun. We have no idea what will happen tomorrow because it’s the first time we’re doing it, so it should be cool.”

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