HONOLULU, Hawaii The wind was the examiner on Friday at Waialae Country Club. It came out of the northeast at 15 to 20 miles per hour and gusted to 30, and it turned the season's first cut into a genuine reckoning: 74 professionals survived at 1-under 139 or better from a field of 118 professionals and two amateurs. When the gusts finally let the leaderboard settle, it had arranged itself into a shape the PGA TOUR has not produced since the 2024 Valspar Championship. Five players share the lead at 9-under 131, and no two of them are there for the same reason.
Davis Riley, S.H. Kim, Adrien Dumont de Chassart, Nick Taylor, Kevin Roy. Two proven winners, two men chasing a first title, and one 25-year-old Belgian in territory entirely new to him. The Sony Open has 36 holes to choose among them.
The round that moved the most
On a day when 30-mile-per-hour gusts made every mid-iron a negotiation, Riley posted a 6-under 64, matching Ryan Gerard for the low round of the day, and climbed from five back into a share of the lead. He did it with the putter. Through two rounds Riley leads the field in Strokes Gained: Putting at 8.764, a startling figure this early in a week, and his 14 birdies are also the most of anyone.
The 29-year-old is seeking his third TOUR win in his 131st start, after the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans with partner Nick Hardy and the 2024 Charles Schwab Challenge. The context that should interest the men beside him: Riley has held or shared a 36-hole lead once before, at that Schwab week in 2024, and he won it. His Sony record offered no warning of this, a T20 in 2022 and a missed cut in 2024, but hot putters rarely consult the archives.
The men still waiting
Two of the five co-leaders have never won on TOUR, and both would join a very particular list by doing it here. Nine players have made the Sony Open in Hawaii their first TOUR victory, most recently Russell Henley in 2013.
S.H. Kim followed his opening 63 with a 68 that matched his low 36-hole total on TOUR, a number he had not touched since the 2021 CJ CUP. The 27-year-old is in his 75th start, still looking for the win his second-place finish at the 2023 Fortinet Championship suggested was coming, and this is his second 36-hole lead; the first, at that Fortinet, slipped to a runner-up finish. His country's golf history offers its own frame: he would be the 10th South Korean to win on TOUR and the third to win this event, after K.J. Choi in 2008 and Si Woo Kim in 2023.
Kevin Roy's 69 was, by the standards of the day, an act of preservation. The 35-year-old followed his bogey-free 62 by holding his place in the wind, and his 131 is the lowest 36-hole score of his career. This is his first 36-hole lead in 62 starts; his previous best position at this stage was a T5 at the 2023 John Deere Classic, a week that faded to T31. Roy has spent his career one step behind moments like this. Now he is in one.
The newcomers, near and nearer
Adrien Dumont de Chassart is the co-leader with the least history to lean on, which cuts both ways. The 25-year-old is making his 33rd start, has never finished better than the T3 he took at the 2024 Butterfield Bermuda Championship, and has never held a share of a 36-hole lead until tonight. His 64-67 is his best 36-hole score on TOUR, and he has done it with touch, leading the field in Strokes Gained: Around the Green at 3.874. He missed the cut here last year. A win would make him the 13th international champion of this event and the first from Belgium, and only the second Belgian ever to win on TOUR, after Thomas Detry at the 2025 WM Phoenix Open.
One shot behind the quintet, in the four-man group at 8-under, sits a story almost too tidy to be plausible. John Parry, a rookie, is making his first start as a PGA TOUR member. No player has won in his first start as a member since Emiliano Grillo at the 2015 Frys.com Open. He has 36 holes to argue with history.
The champion holds his place
Nick Taylor's 69 will not be framed, but it extended two streaks that define his relationship with this course: 18 consecutive rounds at par or better at Waialae, a stretch in which he is 69-under, and 13 straight rounds in the 60s. The 37-year-old Canadian is seeking his sixth TOUR title and the first successful title defense on TOUR since Scottie Scheffler at the 2025 Memorial Tournament; no one has gone back to back at this event since Jimmy Walker in 2015. He has been in this exact position here before, holding the 36-hole lead in 2021 and finishing T11. The difference now is the résumé: five wins, four straight top-11s at Waialae, and the settled air of a man who no longer finds Sundays novel.
The 507th cut
The week's most durable subplot survived the wind. Vijay Singh, 62 years old, made the cut at 2-under, his first made cut in a non-major since the 2020 Memorial Tournament. The bare fact undersells it. It was the 507th made cut of his TOUR career, moving him past Stewart Cink for the sixth-most since 1983. He is the oldest player to make a TOUR cut since Fred Couples at the 2023 Masters, and the oldest to make this particular cut since 1983, passing Fred Funk, who was 60 when he did it in 2017. The 2005 champion of this event, in his 25th appearance, will play the weekend on merit.
What Saturday demands
A five-way tie is not a lead; it is an invitation to create one. Saturday will ask each of the five a different question. Riley must keep making everything, because putting streaks are loans, not gifts. Kim and Roy must manage the particular weight of proximity to a first win, which grows heavier by the hole. Dumont de Chassart must play the biggest round of his career as if it were not. And Taylor must do the thing he has done for four straight years here, which is simply not go backward.
The forecast will have its say; the wind has set the terms all week. But the deeper truth of this leaderboard is that it cannot hold. Five names on one line is a Friday arrangement. Saturday exists to break it.