LIV Golf’s Koepka a tough customer on a tough day to lead PGA Championship

PITTSFORD, New York: Brooks Koepka says he thrives in majors because they’re the toughest tests. The PGA Championship was every bit of that on a rainy Saturday at Oak Hill, and so was Koepka.

Koepka was at his best even during occasional downpours, and he surged into the 54-hole lead for the second straight major. He had a 4-under 66 — the low round at Oak Hill for the second straight day — and led by one shot over Viktor Hovland and Corey Conners.

Now he has to finish it off. Koepka failed to do that last month at the Masters when he had a two-shot lead, played it safe and shot 75 and Jon Rahm tracked him down to win by four.

“I know what I did,” Koepka said. “I promise I won’t show up like that tomorrow.”

The last player to have the low score in the second and third rounds of a major championship was Tiger Woods in the 1997 Masters, which he won by a record 12 shots.

Koepka, who was at 6-under 204, won’t have it that easy.

Conners played Oak Hill like a US Open — that’s what this PGA Championship feels like — by opening with two birdies and 13 pars that kept him in front for so much of the wet, grueling day. And then one swing changed everything.

He was in a bunker right of the 16th fairway when he hit the ball so thin that it disappeared into the lip of the soggy turf. It was plugged deep in the sod, and Conners had to drop it in gnarly rough on top of a mound framing the bunker. He did well to advance that toward the green into more thick grass and took double bogey.

Conners, in control for so long, had to settle for a 70.

Hovland overcame mistakes early with three birdies in a five-hole stretch around the turn. But then the Norwegian failed to take advantage of the scoring stretch — Nos. 13, 14 and 15 —