It’s nice to feel wanted now and again. “If I can keep doing what I’m doing then hopefully I’ll be talking to you a lot more over the weekend,” said Scott Jamieson to a gathering of wilting golf writers as we sweated like a punctured dinghy in the Wentworth heat.
The temperatures were certainly rising on day two of the BMW PGA Championship and Jamieson managed to keep his cool and make some profitable gains here in the Surrey stockbroker belt.
It could have been easy to get hot and bothered, of course, after a particularly shoogly start to his second round.
In the end, his battling two-under 70, for a seven-under aggregate of 137, left him in a share of the halfway lead with Belgium’s Thomas Pieters and Italy’s Francesco Molinari as Jamieson mounted a spirited salvage operation.
Having opened with a purposeful 67 on Thursday, the first three holes of his second 18 featured the kind of dodgy figures you used to get during an audit of the books at Rangers.
He started with a bogey five, then slipped to a double-bogey six on the third and all of a sudden Jamieson was on the back foot. The 33-year-old came out fighting though and he unleashed the heavy artillery during a rousing birdie barrage which got him back on track.
From the fourth to the 12th, the Scot reeled off seven birdies including four in a row from the ninth. It was eye-catching stuff.
“The sooner you can get things back under control the better,” said Jamieson after an eventful day at the office. “It’s easy to spiral the other way, especially on a tough course like this.
"You start off well with a 67 and everyone is sending you a text message saying ‘you’re going to win the tournament’. But you’re only a quarter of the way through. After a start like today it’s only natural that you start thinking ‘if I drop a couple more I might be on the cut line?’
"But making birdies is something I’ve always thrived on. That’s where you get the buzz and that’s what keeps the stride in the steps. Hopefully it’s now more of the same but it’s only half time, there is a long way to go.”
In an upper echelon of a leaderboard, which also includes the likes of Lee Westwood and Open champion Henrik Stenson, Jamieson is relishing the chance to test his mettle against some of game’s leading lights.
“You want to challenge yourself against the world’s best and we don’t get to do that every week but we do here this week,” he added. “Hopefully I can take a few of them down.”
There was a time when the Scots were the lairds of this particular golfing manor. The European Tour’s flagship had five Scottish winners in seven years between 1998 and 2004. The redoubtable Colin Montgomerie claimed three of those with a hat-trick of triumphs in 1998, 1999 and 2000 while the other two successes were very much bolts from the blue.
Andrew Oldcorn was 297th in the world when he won in 2001 while Scott Drummond was 435th on the global order when he triumphed in 2004.
Jamieson is currently 327th in the world but looks more than comfortable in the rarefied air of the title cut-and-thrust. “It would be huge to win this and it would start opening up doors that have been closed for a few years,” he said.
Despite the glorious conditions, the menace and perils of the West Course were abundant with a gusting wind swirling amid the trees. “It’s like Augusta at times,” said Pieters, the Belgian Ryder Cup star who added a 69 to his tally for a seven-under total.
Molinari made a telling thrust late on and picked up birdies at both the 17th and 18th to join the three-strong posse at the top while Westwood and Stenson both lurk ominously on the five-under mark after a 69 and a 71 respectively.
From the crash, bang, wallop of the US scene, where target golf on courses for big bombers tends to be the norm, the questions posed by the West Course has provided a refreshing test.
“I think it's hurting golf a bit, going to golf courses that are 7,500 or 7,600 yards, where the caddies can just walk forward and send the players back with a driver and they don't have to think about it too much,” said Westwood.
Justin Rose, after a calamitous eight on the sixth, conjured an eagle on the last in a 74 for a 146 and made sure he'll be around for the weekend.
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