Maybank Championship Malaysia 2017: Friday Leaderboard Scores and Highlights

Bernd Wiesberger shot to the top of the leaderboard at the 2017 Maybank Championship Malaysia on Friday with a sensational nine-under 63 after hitting nine birdies in succession.

The Austrian now sits on 12-under overall, one shot in front of Danny Willett after he carded 67 to build on his impressive opening salvo on Thursday.

David Lipsky recorded the same score to take his total to nine-under par, while Mike Lorenzo-Vera shot seven under to pull level with the American. Overnight leader Marc Warren slipped to six-under after shooting 75.

Here is the leaderboard at the close of play on Friday in Kuala Lumpur:

Pos	Player	Thursday	To Par
1	Bernd Wiesberger	63	-12
2	Danny Willett	67	-11
T3	David Lipsky	67	-9
T3	Mike Lorenzo-Vera	65	-9
T5	Shubhankar Sharma	68	-8
T5	K.T. Tim	68	-8
T7	Marcel Siem	71	-7
T7	Sam Brazel	71	-7
T7	Shiv Kapur	67	-7
T7	Anirban Lahiri	68	-7

The full leaderboard can be accessed via the European Tour's official website.

Friday Recap

Wiesberger made his first gain at the third only to drop the shot on the following hole.

Undeterred, the 31-year-old responded in magnificent fashion and embarked on an unbelievable run of birdies starting with the seventh.

After making it six in a row at the 12th, Wiesberger had recorded the longest run of 2017 thus far according to the Tour's official Twitter feed. Two more and he was out on his own at the front:

He sank a long putt at the 15th to make it nine and finished his round with another birdie after picking up a bogey on the 17th:

Per the European Tour, he said: 

"

I hit really good shots and I just felt calm out there. It felt kind of natural, I hit pretty good shots and really only holed two long ones which were the last birdie of the nine on 15 and about a 20-footer on 11.

Apart from that I just hit them pretty close and felt like I had a good idea of what the ball was going to do on the green today again which was nice.

"

Wiesberger also took to Facebook to celebrate his round afterwards:

Meanwhile, after an unblemished round on Thursday, a single bogey was all that prevented Willett from carding six under for the second day running.

It came at the eighth, cancelling out the Englishman's gain at the fifth, but he picked up four more shots in the next six holes.

Willett finished the round strongly with a sublime putt:

Lorenzo-Vera had a quiet day on Thursday, carding a par on every hole of the back nine, but he put himself firmly in contention ahead of the weekend after recording six birdies and an eagle at the par-five, 534-yard eighth.

Warren shot nine under in his opening round and looked to have built on that with three further gains at the 13th, 17th and third.

However, a disastrous finish saw him drop shots at the fourth, fifth and seventh before carding a triple bogey on his final hole.

The Scot is still on six under, but he'll need a big response if he's to bounce back positively from such a setback.

Even if he's able to, those at the top of the leaderboard are building momentum, and it may be too big an ask to catch them up.