Ben Griffin takes 36-hole solo lead at Astara Golf Championship presented by Mastercard

BOGOTA, Colombia – In just his 13th career Korn Ferry Tour start since turning professional in 2018, and less than a year after stepping away from golf to work as a loan officer, Ben Griffin sits alone atop the leaderboard after 36 holes at the Astara Golf Championship presented by Mastercard. Griffin carded a 9-under 61 on Country Club de Bogota’s Pacos course Friday, taking him to 12-under par for the tournament and putting him one stroke ahead of Ryan McCormick and MJ Daffue.

Griffin began the second round in T36 position, but concluded it with his first lead of any kind on the Korn Ferry Tour.

A 25-year-old native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Griffin made 10 birdies Friday, the most in a single round on the Korn Ferry Tour this season. It also marked Griffin’s best score in PGA TOUR-sanctioned play by three strokes, as his previous career-low round was an 8-under 64 in the final round of his win at the 2018 Staal Foundation Open presented by tbaytel on PGA TOUR Canada.

“Hit it very well. Actually hit it pretty good yesterday, too,” Griffin said. “Just staying patient yesterday and couldn’t quite get the putts to drop, then today the putter was very hot. Played my game, played a little bit of angle golf. It’s a shorter course, but you can short side yourself, so it’s important to be on the right side of the pins. I was able to do that, and made a lot of putts. That was the key today.”

Griffin teed off the 6,249-yard Pacos course on the par-4 10th, where he made birdie. He birdied every other hole (Nos. 12, 14, 16) before a bogey at the par-4 18th. Following the bogey, Griffin birdied the first four holes of his back nine and added two more at the par-5 seventh and par-4 ninth.

“I three-putted for bogey,” Griffin said of the 18th. “I was a little disappointed. That lit a fire in me to get going, because I knew there were a lot of birdie holes ahead.”

Griffin, who posted finishes of T8 and T12 in the Korn Ferry Tour’s season-opening events in The Bahamas, earned guaranteed starts for the first eight events via a T29 at the Final Stage of the 2021 Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying Tournament. Ironically, the tournament which got Griffin back on Tour was far from his mind in the spring of 2021, when stepped away from golf due to a combination of burnout and financial stress. Griffin took a job as a loan officer for a mortgage group in North Carolina.

A highly-touted junior player and a multi-time All-America Honorable Mention at North Carolina, Griffin enjoyed immediate success on PGA TOUR Canada.

In Griffin’s first event, roughly a week after the 2018 NCAA Championships concluded on May 28, he finished solo fourth. A month later, Griffin won the Staal Foundation Open. He ended the season ranked eighth on the Order of Merit, with one of the biggest perks he earned being an exemption for the Final Stage of the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying Tournament. A T100 finish there left Griffin without guaranteed starts for 2019.

Saddled with a low priority ranking number, Griffin split the 2019 season between Korn Ferry Tour (six missed cuts in eight starts) and PGA TOUR Canada (three missed cuts in four starts), but combined for less than $4,000 in official money across both tours. After a failed run on PGA TOUR Latinoamérica (four missed cuts in four starts) for the 2020-21 season, Griffin became a loan officer.

“Before there was a lot more of me questioning myself and my belief, but when I was sitting at my desk thinking about how I was asking myself those questions a couple months prior, I was like, ‘Man, I am good enough!’” Griffin told PGATOUR.com last November. “I just didn’t have that self-confidence and belief six months ago and now I’m realizing you’ve got it and you have everything you need.”

Now Griffin is 36 holes away from another significant change in career status.

“The tournament is not even close to over. A lot of golf left,” Griffin said. “I’ve been feeling really good about my golf game. I’m just trying to keep the patience and keep doing my thing.”

Third-round tee times will run from 7:30-9:31 a.m. ET off the first and 10th tees at the Lagos course.