Bad weather strikes again

The Scottish PGA Championship will be decided over 36 holes for the first time in 49 years after Gleneagles was hit by a second bout of bad weather in three days.

Persistent rain and a cold temperature forced the delayed second round to be postponed at 11.30am before play was abandoned for the day three-and-a-half hours later.

Twenty-eight players, including former Open champion Paul Lawrie, will return at 9am on Wednesday morning to finish their rounds on the King’s Course.

Lawrie, a two-times winner, resumes on the 14th needing to cover his last five holes in three-under to join clubhouse leaders Chris Kelly and Paul McKechnie on three-under-par.

If not, 2003 winner Kelly and McKechnie, a former PGA EuroPro Tour No 1, will be involved in a sudden-death play-off in the Tartan Tour’s flagship event.

The last time the tournament was decided over 36 holes was in 1966 at Cruden Bay, where the spoils were shared by John Panton and Eric Brown after they tied on 137.

Both Kelly and McKechnie made the most of getting a break with the weather as officials crammed as much play as possible into Monday after a washout at the Perthshire venue on Sunday.

Out in the first group, Kelly got in two rounds in the one day, following an opening 77 with a five-under-par 66 that contained five birdies in seven holes from the ninth.

“It's my first event of the year, but I've done a lot of good practice over the last three weeks,” said the Team SSE Scottish Hydro player.

While not quite so lucky in the sense that he didn’t get finished on Monday night, McKechnie birdied two of the three holes he had left to play when played resumed at 7am on Tuesday morning, when the conditions were still reasonably favourably before getting worse as the morning progressed.

“I went out this morning prepared for the possibility of it being decided over 36 holes so it was a good way to finish off the round,” said the Braid Hills Golf Range player.

He joined Kelly in the clubhouse lead by rolling in an eight-footer “straight up the hill” at the 16th then getting down in two putts from 40 feet at the last.

Having only managed 18 holes on Monday, both Lawrie and fellow two-times winner Greig Hutcheon saw their title hopes dented as they had to endure the worst of the conditions.

“It was impossible by the time when got to the 12th,” said Lawrie, who was two-under for the day to that point but then duly dropped three shots in two holes.

“You couldn’t hold the clubs as it was freezing and my brolly broke. It’s massively unfair, but that’s the way it is. It’s a shame.”

Hutcheon, the Tartan Tour No 1, was leading the tournament on seven-under when he came off the sixth green.

But, between there and the 17th tee, he spilled 15 shots, a disastrous run that included several double-bogeys and a quintuple-bogey 9 at the 14th.

“I took a 3 iron from the tee for safety but lost it, took another 3 iron for safety and did the same thing, a third 3 iron and found the trees,” reported the Paul Lawrie Golf Centre player. “You couldn’t hold the club it was so cold.”

PGA in Scotland officials decided it would be “impractical” to decide the event over 54 holes due to the fact a cut would have to made after the completion of the second round and most of the players would then need to be recalled to the course.