Rory roars back in round 2 of Masters, Rose still leads

Nearly counted out after a collapse during the final four holes Thursday

Rory McIlroy put himself back into Masters contention Friday, charging up the leaderboard with the low round of the day

The Northern Irishman, who needs the green jacket to earn the career major Grand Slam

started the back nine, birdie-birdie on Friday, then eagled 13 and birdied 15 to post a 6-under 66

It was good enough to move him 24 spots up the leaderboard into third place

He was asked how he put Thursday behind him and said it was important to get home before his daughter went to bed

It helped keep him grounded. I just had to remind myself that I played really good golf yesterday

And, you know, I wasn't going to let two, you know, two bad holes sort of dictate the narrative for the rest of the week

But yeah, just ultimately, yeah, just proud of how I got back into it today

While Rory was the story of the day, the leader is still Britain's Justin Rose

who was steady shooting a 171 to finish at minus eight after two rounds

He's also looking for his first green jacket. He plans to go shot for shot with the best in the world this weekend

and took a good-natured shot at the TV pundits, who said he'd fall off in the second round

I'm glad you told me now, not this morning. That's probably why I'm not going to watch TV all afternoon, so thank you

What do they know? That why they pundits No Listen I mean sometimes it hard to follow a low round with another one Just the nature of it sometimes But I feel like if you playing good golf you playing good golf you know

So it's Rose followed by Bryson DeChambeau, who's quietly in the mix for major championship number three

He says shooting for the middle of the green instead of the flag has been key for him

Then it's Rory McIlroy and Connors at minus six and four guys at minus five

who had up and down scoring Fridays, including defending champ Scotty Scheffler, who broke down Y

It's a day-to-day thing. Like yesterday, I felt really sharp. Today, not as sharp. You know, could the conditions have attributed to that? I'm sure a little bit

It was definitely much harder to hit the ball where you were looking today just because the wind was blowing from everywhere

And, you know, that's what's great about this golf course is, you know, it's quite challenging

And you get wins like that, you really got to manage your expectations, manage yourself around the course

Some notables who did not manage and therefore did not make the cut

Legends Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer, who missed the cut with a bogey on 18

And live golfers Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, and Brooks Koepka, who had a quadruple bogey on 18

I can relate to that. Saturday is moving day, and after all it's said and done, the players in contention will want to be in one of the final two pairings

17 of the last 20 Masters winners have come from that spot on the leaderboard when teeing off on Sunday

For Straight Arrow News, I'm Chris Francis