McMahon and Taylor tied at the top as Northwest Championship tightens

Eagle McMahon and Luke Taylor turned the Northwest Championship into a real closing test at Riverbend East, finishing Round 2 tied at 18-under as the final-round picture tightened around them. Isaac Robinson sat one stroke back at 17-under, and the leaderboard behind that top trio stayed crowded enough to keep the chase alive going into the last round at Milo.

The tie matters because McMahon and Taylor arrived there in different ways. McMahon came in as the familiar standard-bearer, the 1038-rated player with 61 career wins and $384,279.20 in earnings, and he lived up to that billing by staying at the top of a field built to expose any weakness. Taylor, rated 1034 with 43 career wins and $108,301 in earnings, brought a different kind of pressure after finishing third at the 2026 Discraft Cascade Challenge, and his run has made this co-lead feel less expected and more unstable for everyone chasing him.

That instability runs through the rest of the board. Gannon Buhr and Anthony Barela were tied at 14-under, Väinö Mäkelä was at 13-under and Paul Krans at 12-under, while Bradley Williams, Corey Ellis and Cole Redalen hovered in the 11-under range. Richard Wysocki and Parker Welck were also in the chase pack, giving the final round enough depth to turn on one hot stretch rather than just a two-man match race. The 111-player MPO field and $71,370 purse underscored how much is still in play.

The setup has been designed for this kind of squeeze. The 2026 Northwest Championship is a DGPT+ event spread across June 4-7 in Portland and Estacada, Oregon, with Riverbend Gold at Milo McIver State Park and Glendoveer East serving as the primary venues. The tour created the event in 2025 by combining the Portland Open and Beaver State Fling, and this year’s edition has been positioned as a preview for the 2027 PDGA Pro World Championships, which will be played on the same Portland-area courses.

That backdrop gives the McMahon-Taylor tie extra weight. The PDGA event page listed the tournament as in progress and named Jesse Tomaino as tournament director, while last year’s inaugural edition showed how volatile this championship can be when Gannon Buhr won by one stroke over Kyle Klein and Anthony Barela. With Robinson close enough to pounce and Buhr, Barela and the rest of the pack still in range, the Northwest Championship has not settled into a duels-only script. It has become the kind of final-round board that can still crack open if one of the leaders blinks at Milo.