Two Tied At European Grand Prix
For the third day running rain wrecked play in the £650,000 Compaq European Grand Prix. Tournament officials managed to get the first round completed by early afternoon, but only 43 players finished their second round before heavy rain returned to end the day just before 5.30pm.
The problem was, yet again, the state of the fairways. Players slogged their way through entire rounds in the rain, but in the end the tournament director, Mike Stewart, had to suspend the round because there was no place for players to obtain relief from casual water on the fairways.
This is turning out to be one of the most rain-affected tournaments in recent European Tour history. Although Stewart was adamant that he was still hoping to complete a 54-hole event, it seemed more likely that it would be restricted to 36 holes.
The last time a tournament on the European circuit was as badly affected as this one was the BMW International Open at Munich almost exactly two years ago, when the Frenchman, Marc Farry, completed 36 holes on schedule by Friday night and then had to wait for almost two days before being handed the first victory of his career in a ranking event.
Mark Davis, a genial Englishman, led at the end of the first round after a 64, five under par for a course that had been shortened by 681 yards on three holes on the back nine because of flooded fairways. Davis lost his player's card at the end of last season, but reclaimed it by finishing 21st at the Tour qualifying school last autumn.
He has had several more encouraging finishes this season, including ties for fourth and eighth in the Moroccan and Cannes Opens respectively, and as a result has been promoted to first in the qualifying school exemption category after the Tour's first re-ranking of school graduates. It means that he will be able to play in almost every tournament for the rest of this season, and if he goes on to win this event he will be exempt for every tour event or the nest two years.
Davis slipped somewhat in the second round, subsiding to one under par while the baton was taken up among those to have completed 36 holes by Andrew Sherborne and Barry Lane. Sherborne had a one-under-par round of 68 that included a switchback first nine holes. Starting at the tenth, he had three birdies and two bogeys to beat par by a shot going through the turn, then reeled off nine straight pars to complete a 68.
Former Ryder Cup player Lane also started from the tenth and dropped two shots in the next nine holes to slip out of contention, but he splashed through the rain to come back in 33 with birdie at the second, fifth and sixth.
"I am happy enough to have got it round in one under," Lane said. "I have been playing OK since the end of last season, but my attitude has been terrible. My coach, Scott Cranfield, told me last week that I had been worrying about where the ball was going to go before I even hit it."
"I think Scott had a really good point, so now I'm trying to focus more on the moment of contact without worrying unduly where it goes. Once you've hit the ball, there's no point in worrying about it. It's away and over and done with."
As play was abandoned for the day, Diego Borrego, of Spain, had just completed the first hole of his second round and remained on the top of the leaderboard on four under par. Bad-weather specialist Farry was also on four under with two holes to play. A total of 108 players still have to finish their second rounds on Sunday morning following a course inspection at 6.30am.