OWINGS MILLS, Md. – Tommy Fleetwood strolled over to the media area just outside the Caves Valley clubhouse on Friday afternoon, ready to answer questions about his second round. But before fielding the first, he looked toward Robert MacIntyre, who was wrapping up an interview of his own a few feet away. Fleetwood waited to lock eyes with MacIntyre, then just silently shook his head and smirked at his close friend.

The reaction mirrored that of anybody who had caught a glimpse of MacIntyre through two rounds of the BMW Championship – a mix of bewilderment and appreciation. MacIntyre raced out to a commanding lead after rounds of 62-64 put him 14-under at a toughened-up Caves Valley, his lead up to seven strokes as he signed his scorecard. MacIntyre couldn’t help but smile at Fleetwood’s reaction, as if to say, “I don’t know what’s happening, either.”

The stats, though, paint a clear picture of MacIntyre’s excellence through 36 holes. His approach game has been top tier, but his putting has put him over the edge. And it’s the culmination of changes MacIntyre made earlier this season to improve his streaky performances on the greens.

“I've always said when I'm comfortable with a putter in my hands, it's a dangerous thing,” MacIntyre said.

The Scot has worked to reach that comfort. He was anything but at ease earlier this year, struggling massively on Augusta National’s greens – a funk that carried over to the PGA Championship the next month. That’s when MacIntyre decided to make substantive changes. He had added Mike Kanski, a disciple of renowned coach Phil Kenyon, as his putting coach earlier in the year, but the duo decided to shift philosophies ahead of the year’s second major, coinciding with a shift in putters as MacIntyre ditched his Scotty Cameron for a TaylorMade Spider GT.

“The priority is getting that putter face as square as I can at impact, which it's not rocket science, but it's difficult to do,” MacIntyre said Thursday. “For me, that's the priority now, just to go and do that. Then when you get in a certain range, it's all pace putting and touch, and my touch is normally pretty good.”

The putter change flipped MacIntyre’s immediately. He has gained strokes on the greens in all but one event since the PGA Championship, slowly gaining confidence week by week. MacIntyre tied for sixth at the Charles Schwab Challenge, finished runner-up at the U.S. Open and backed it up at The Open Championship, tying for seventh. And after two rounds at the BMW Championship, he’s well on his way to a victory.

The putting performance reached a new peak Thursday at Caves Valley as MacIntyre put together the best statistical round of his career on the greens. He holed 195 feet of putts and gained more than five shots on the field as he birdied the final six holes to shoot into the lead. That included running in putts of 65 and 40 feet. He backed it up with another stellar day on Friday, holing just under 100 feet of putts and again gaining strokes in a bogey-free effort. His longest holed putts were 29 and 14 feet. MacIntyre unsurprisingly leads the field in putting.

“If you're on the wrong side of the holes, it's going to be carnage out here,” MacIntyre said. “I feel like this week I've really done a good job of getting it underneath the hole to be able to be aggressive with an uphill putt.”

Only three other golfers are within seven shots of MacIntyre. Fleetwood is not among them, in a tie for fifth at 6-under, but eight shots back.

“I think it's easy to see one person's score, which is phenomenal, and be a bit frustrated with the odd mistake really,” Fleetwood said. “I think that just emphasizes when you do make a bogey or a couple of bogeys, it's easy to get frustrated at that.”

The tournament is firmly in the Scot’s control, even with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler lurking a handful of shots behind him. If MacIntyre maintains any semblance of this putting performance over the weekend, just take his word for it: That’s a “dangerous thing.”