All to play for at Farleigh
30/08/2019
Defending champions Jack Winer and James Watts and Northamptonshire duo Simon Lilly and Michael Campbell (above) traded eagles to finish the second round of the Golfbreaks.com PGA Fourball Championship sharing pole position.
Winer (right), who represents Abridge Golf and Country Club, recorded two of them as he and Kingsway Golf Centre’s Watts posted a 12-under-par round of 60 to go into the third and final round on 23-under.
Similarly Lilly, who is attached to De Vere Staverton Estate, supplemented the seven birdies in his round by bagging two eagles as he and Campbell signed for an 11-under-par round of 61.
Kettering Golf Club’s Campbell upstaged them both, however, with a hole-in-one at the par-three seventh.
The ace followed the first of his partner’s eagles and was key to them reaching the turn in eight-under. Thereafter, by comparison, they were becalmed, negotiating the back nine of a course in superb condition in three-under.
By contrast, Watts and Winer experienced a relatively low-key outward half until the first of Winer’s eagles at the par-five ninth lit the blue touch paper.
The subsequent six holes featured five birdies and an eagle, at the par-five 12th, before Watts landed his approach to within four-feet of the flag on the 18th and signed off with yet another birdie.
All of which shows that, given the betterball format of the tournament, fortunes and scores can change with bewildering rapidity.
Moreover, with just five shots spanning the leading nine pairs of the 31 that made the cut, the chase for the £5,500 winner’s cheque is wide open.
The pursuing pack includes last year’s runners up – Adam Keogh and Michael Reed who were defeated in a play-off by Winer and Watts.
They are three shots shy of the joint leaders and one adrift of a pair for whom victory would be a manna from heaven for a Hollywood scriptwriter – Scottish duo Craig Lee and Heather MacRae (above).
In addition to MacRae’s participation in the tournament being her first competitive action since undergoing major surgery 10 weeks ago to combat a life-threatening condition, a woman has never been party to winning this event.
Should she and her partner reprise the way they played in round two, however, that omission could be in jeopardy.
Lee, a member of the 2019 PGA Cup team recorded seven bogeys, and MacRae, the 2019 Women’s PGA Champion weighed in with six before a bogey at the last denied them a 13-under-par round of 59 and left them two shots behind the joint leaders as opposed to one.
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- PGA Fourball Championship
