SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France — British golfer Tommy Fleetwood is on familiar turf and chasing another gold prize at Le Golf National, this one an Olympic pendant instead of that 17-inch Ryder Cup trophy.

The medal chase in men’s golf began to take shape Friday at the Paris Olympics, with Fleetwood sharing the 36-hole lead with reigning champion Xander Schauffele of the United States and Hideki Matsuyama of Japan, giving another sellout crowd plenty of star power at the top .

Schauffele was slowed by ants in the rough and posted a 5-under-par 66 in the second round, tying the 36-hole Olympic record he set three years ago at the Tokyo Games. The two other guys at the top of the leaderboard had sloppy finishes to their days.

Fleetwood took a bogey from a fairway bunker for a 64, while Matsuyama went from rough to water for a double bogey on the 18th and a 68. They were all at 11-under 131, two ahead of Spain’s Jon Rahm (66), who was higher on the leaderboard than any other player from the LIV Golf League.

Schauffele appears to be on auto-pilot at times, with the PGA Tour star who is No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking not missing a step from winning the British Open last month for his second major championship of the year.

Fleetwood, however, has the experience on this track. He won the Europe-based DP World Tour’s French Open at Le Golf National in 2017 and then starred in Europe’s Ryder Cup victory against the US a year later on the same course, going 4-1 in his matches.

“You’re always better off coming to a course where you have good feelings and good things have happened. So I’ll definitely draw on those,” he said. “But again, I have to stand up there tomorrow and hit the golf shots. Nothing that’s happened in the past is going to do it for me.

“It’s better having good feelings than having a course that’s battered you to pieces.”

AP photo by George Walker IV / British golfer Tommy Fleetwood taps hands with fans as he walks to the 15th tee at Le Golf National on Friday during the second round of the Olympic men’s golf tournament for the 2024 Paris Games in Saint-Quentin-en- Yvelines, France.

Schauffele had three straight birdies around the turn and was making it look easy until one bad drive on the 13th and one weird lie. The ball was buried so deep a marshal stuck his finger in the tall grass to show him where it was. Schauffele noticed something else: ants.

He was trying to position his club when he saw something behind his golf ball.

“It was a pile of ants, an ant pile, whatever you want to call it,” he said.

There is free relief from a dangerous animal — fire ants are cited in the rules — but these weren’t the dangerous variety. One official said Schauffele could scrape it away with his club, only Schauffele was n’t sure about that. A second official said he could use his tee to scrape away the pile.

All that for a shot that he could only hack out some 50 yards, leading to a bogey. That was the extent of his drama for the day.

“Five under is a good score on this property,” he said. “Overall, sitting in a good spot coming into the weekend.”

Belgium’s Thomas Detry (63), South Korea’s Tom Kim (68) and Taiwan’s CT Pan (65) — the bronze medalist at the Tokyo Games — were tied for fifth at 8 under, with Germany’s Stephan Jaeger (64) and Italy’s Guido Migliozzi ( 67) Another stroke behind and filling out the top 10 going into the weekend.

Jaeger, a former Baylor School and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga standout who competes on the PGA Tour but remains a resident of the Scenic City, made one of the biggest jumps on the leaderboard Friday, moving up 34 spots in the 60-player field. His 31 on the front nine included three birdies and an eagle on the par-5 third hole, and he added birdies on the 14th and 16th on the way to his bogey-free round.

“I think I gave myself a lot of chances,” said Jaeger, 35, who is competing in the Olympics for the first time. “I can’t think of how many greens I actually hit, but it must have been quite a few because I felt like I never really chipped. So I had a chance to make birdie on every hole — even if it’s a longer putt, “They are slopey but not too crazy. So you can have a lot of opportunities to make birdies, but I capitalized on a few of them for sure.”

Top-ranked Scottie Scheffler, the reigning Masters champion who is representing the US, is at least in range and plenty happy about that. He took a double bogey on the seventh hole from grass so thick he could advance the shot only about 10 feet, and the next one only about 80 yards. He was 2 over for the day and losing ground quickly.

“Panic is definitely not the right word,” Scheffler said. “But when you look up at the leaderboard, I think at the time I was maybe nine shots back or something like that. Around a golf course like this, where the scores are going to continue to get lower, it could be tough to catch up. I needed to do something to get back in the tournament.”

He covered the back nine in 31 strokes for a 69 and was five shots behind, tied for 10th.

The greens have been so perplexing to Scheffler that after misreading a six-foot birdie chance on the ninth hole, he had caddy Ted Scott read them the rest of the way and trusted it.

“The way I was feeling, I wasn’t really going to disagree with what he was saying,” Scheffler explained.

Rahm played alongside Schauffele and at one point found himself five shots back. However, the big Spaniard ran off three straight birdies in the middle of the back nine, including a tee shot to three feet on the par-3 16th, and then saved par on the final hole.

Although the two-time major champion won in England this past Sunday for his first LIV victory since joining the Saudi-funded circuit of 54-hole, no-cut tournaments late last year, this is his first time competing on a big stage in 2024. . Rahm tied for seventh in the British Open for his best result in a major, though he was never really in the mix.

Now he is, and he got a good look at what he faces in Schauffele riding a wave of momentum.

“What Xander has done this year weighs much more than the medal from three years ago,” Rahm said, adding with a laugh: “And I didn’t tell him because I don’t want to remind him of all the good things he has achieved.”

Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy was six shots behind and tied for 13th, with his big push late halted by a double bogey from deep rough on the 17th hole.

“A few too many mistakes,” the four-time major champion said. “Similar stories to yesterday.”