Singapore Open Round 2 .... almost

The second round or rather, three quarters of the second round of The Barclays Singapore Open was suspended today because of bad light at around 6.40pm local time. A lightning delay of three hours was the culprit - that and a field of 209 players, who were never going to get it done with even the shortest of delays.

Note to Euro and Asian Tours – It’s the pre monsoon season and we will get weather delays. Having 209 players and using two courses may well be laudable for giving your young Asian players some valuable exposure against world class players, but for goodness sake – use two tees!

In the meantime, I caught up with an old mate of mine out there today, in Daniel Chopra. I think I put the jinx on him, because with a handful of holes to play, he was three over for the day and at one, possibly two shots away from the cut. This was after a handy 67 yesterday on Tanjong. C’mon Daniel – lights out tomorrow morning!

There are some well known names on the leaderboard while some equally interesting others looking like missing the cut. We have a Molinari one off the pace set by James Morrison, but not Fransesco, rather the sometimes forgotten brother, Eduardo.  Justin Rose, Anders Hansen, Louis Oosthuizen, Y.E Yang and Anthony Kim are some notables lurking near the top of the heap.

At the other end of proceedings and struggling to make it to the weekend, are Phil Mickelson, Paddy Harrington, Camilo Villegas and Jhonathon Vegas. Phil The Thrill, played a very pedestrian round of even par yesterday on the far easier Tanjong course and today has it at 2 under on Serapong. I think he’s going to need one more to be there for the weekend. The good news is that if he does miss the cut, he can get to Melbourne a couple days earlier and knock a little more of the rust off after a six week break.

The courses are in magnificent shape as always, so kudos to Peter Downie, the Sentosa GM and Andy Johnston, the Super. A funny aside to the condition of both courses, the greens are stimping at 12 and the tees at 9!! So the tees this week are quicker than the greens were last week in Taiwan for The Mercuries Taiwan Masters. Great effort boys!