Chappell quietly shares lead with world No. 1 Day at RBC Heritage

Kevin Chappell set his feet in the pine straw and readied for his second shot on the final hole. He was about to finish a round that would put him atop the leaderboard at the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing.

Still, people did not know who he was.

“This guy’s in the lead, just in case you didn’t know,” spectator Scott Adams whispered to his friend, Steve Finlay. “I didn’t know who the (heck) he was.”

The men stood near Chappell off the right side of No. 9 at Harbour Town Golf Links and watched. Chappell swung. The ball arced toward the green but fell short, landing in the rough, just missing the bunker.

Chappell slammed his club into the ground.

The outburst was a rare moment of frustration in a round that saw the Fresno, Calif., native make just one bogey. Chappell, in search of his first PGA Tour victory, shot a 3-under-par 68 for the second straight day. He enters the weekend sharing the lead with Charley Hoffman and the world’s top-ranked golfer, Jason Day . The trio is 6 under on the tournament.

On Friday, plenty of golfers found the pine straw on No. 9. Hoffman wound up there before saving par to close out his round. And Graham DeLaet, playing in Chappell’s group, preceded Chappell into the straw.

But Chappell’s third shot, from the rough, about 50 feet from the pin, trickled to within a foot of the hole. He tapped in for par, and quietly walked into the clubhouse with the early lead.

Despite Chappell’s showing Friday — and despite his recent second-place finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational — no one seemed to recognize the world’s 72nd-ranked player.

Chappell started out shaky, bogeying his second hole (No. 11 — he started on the back nine). He birdied the par-3 14th and did the same at Nos. 1, 2 and 4.

Moments before he’d walked onto the No. 9 tee box, a trio of spectators in the middle of a crosswalk watched his group pass by — one of them said, “Which one is Chappell?”

Earlier still, as he’d walked to No. 7, a man behind the ropes said, “That’s him, right there? Chappell?”

And even earlier, on No. 6, after he’d landed his approach about 10 feet from the pin, a woman behind the green said, “Which one is Chappell? The one in the yellow?”

No, that was Ian Poulter, the snazzy-dressing Englishman, whose neon-yellow shoes and shirt clashed tastefully with his black pants and long-sleeve shirt. Poulter (2 over), a decade-plus tour veteran and two-time winner, was projected to miss the cut.

Also playing in Chappell’s and Poulter’s group was DeLaet (3 under), a Canadian whose post-birdie-putt smile is barely visible beneath his long, bushy beard.

“Graham’s a little more full,” Chappell said, comparing his caddie’s beard to that of DeLaet. “But there was a lot of facial hair in our group, wasn’t there?”

If you follow golf casually, you might’ve been able, by process of elimination, to pick Chappell — a tour regular since 2011 who has two second-places finishes this year — out of Friday’s grouping.

It’s fair to say Chappell was the most ... understated ... golfer among the trio. He wore all black. His name was hard to see on the back of his caddie’s bib: The caddie’s jacket hood covered the “CHAPPELL” label. The blue lettering of Chappell’s “BRUINS” yardage book — he’s a UCLA alum — was the only thing that set him apart.

That, and his play.

This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Chappell quietly shares lead with world No. 1 Day at RBC Heritage."