SAN DIEGO — Camilo Villegas survived the South Course at Torrey Pines to keep the lead.

John Rollins thrived on it.

After starting the Buick Invitational by matching a career best with a 63 on the easier North Course, Villegas began the second round in a steady rain on a course that last year hosted the U.S. Open. Knowing the difficulty of the course and the conditions of the day, his hope simply was to keep it around par, maybe even better. And that's what he did.

He holed one from off the 11th green — his fifth straight birdie on a par 3 — dropped only one shot, picked up birdies on two of the par 5s and wound up with a 2-under 70 to reach 11-under 133, an ominous score on a dreary Friday at the Buick Invitational.

It looked as though this might be another runaway, just like last year when Tiger Woods built a four-shot lead going into the weekend. Rollins, who started an hour after Villegas, was wondering the same thing.

"I was just trying to get myself in position to be in one of the last couple of groups, at least be right there in the middle of the golf tournament going into the weekend," Rollins said. "I really wasn't out there saying, 'OK, I need to get to 11 (under),' because the South Course is so difficult that it's hard to do that."

Rollins shot a 64 to finish one shot behind, and he somehow made it look easy.

He knocked in a 15-foot birdie putt at No. 2, and holed another putt from about the same distance two holes later. From the middle of the fifth fairway, 123 yards away from a pin tucked perilously to the left and the wind in his face, Rollins hit a 9-iron that landed beyond the hole and spun back into the cup for an eagle.

He followed that with a bunker shot to 6 feet for birdie on the par-5 sixth, an 18-foot par save on the seventh, a tee shot to 3 feet for yet another birdie on the eighth.

Suddenly, Rollins was tied for the lead with the par-5 ninth remaining.

"I did not know the course record," he said. "I was just told that Tiger holds the course record at 9 under, or something like that. I would hate to take anything away from Tiger, so I figured I'd better make bogey, not birdie."

Rollins found the rough, hacked out and still had 200 yards remaining into the wind. He hit 5-iron into a bunker, knocked it out to 5 feet and missed the putt.

"Mentally, you think even par is a good round," Rollins said. "I started to hit the ball a little bit better and continued to make the putts and got out of there with 8 under."

Got out of there with 8 under? Sounds like he was more satisfied than elated.

"It doesn't happen real often you can say, 'I got out of the South Course with an 8 under,"' he said with a smile. "But today, everything kind of worked out well for me."