MASTERS champion Jordan Spieth kept his bid to make history firmly on track as Tiger Woods missed just his fifth cut in 68 majors as a professional on Friday.
Spieth is looking to become just the sixth man, after Craig Wood, Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Woods, to win the Masters and US Open in the same year.
The world number two can also become the first player since Gene Sarazen in 1922 to win multiple majors aged 21 or younger at Chambers Bay and set the clubhouse target at five under par after adding a 67 to his opening 68.
Starting on the back nine, Spieth birdied the 10th, 14th, 15th and 17th - he also three-putted the driveable 12th for par after missing from two feet - before running up a double-bogey six on the par-four 18th.
The 21-year-old hit the lip of a bunker with his second shot and found more sand with his third and was heard on television complaining about the "dumbest hole I've ever played in my life."
The 18th was played as a 617-yard par five in the opening round and after his round Spieth added: "I think 18 as a par four doesn't make much sense. Of course at the moment when I didn't hit the right shots it's going to make less sense.
"You can hit it down the left centre of the fairway and still end up in the right bunker in trouble. There's a group of about 10, 12 guys that can fly it 310 yards that have an entirely different hole to play there. For anybody else you have to hit it in a five or six-yard area.
"So all in all I thought it was a dumb hole today, but I think we're going to play it from there again, so I've got to get over that."
Spieth led from start to finish when winning the Masters in April, setting new 36 and 54-hole scoring records and becoming the first player ever to reach 19 under par at Augusta.
"I'll probably draw a significant amount off it (although) it's playing different and I'm in a very different position," he added. "I'm not going to have a four, five-shot lead.
"I know that it's going to get tougher and tougher now that Saturday and Sunday hits. So I'll draw some on Augusta, but at the same time my patience level has to be even that much higher. I'm not quite putting myself in the same positions off the tee, so I've got to be a little more methodical.
"At Augusta I was kind of finding fairways, hitting it on the green and I was making everything. That would be nice here if I could do that, but it's a harder golf course than the Masters played this year."
As overnight leaders Henrik Stenson and Dustin Johnson began their second rounds, Spieth held a one-shot lead over South African Branden Grace, with Holland's Joost Luiten another shot back alongside American trio Tony Finau, Daniel Summerhays and Ben Martin.
At the other end of the leaderboard, Woods added a second round of 76 to his opening 80 - his worst score ever in the US Open and third in the 80s in six events - to finish 16 over par and in a tie for 154th.
"I hit a little bit better today," said the former world number one, who won the last of his 14 major titles in the 2008 US Open. "But again I made nothing today. I didn't make any putts the first two days.
"On golf course like this you get exposed and you have to be precise and dialled in. And obviously I didn't have that. Obviously I need to get a little better for the British Open and I'll keep working at it."
