The celebrity grinathon that is the £3.2m Alfred Dunhill Links Championship is simply awash with money.
Michael Douglas probably has a larger amount of loose change jangling about in the bottom of his golf bag than George Murray has earned on the European Tour this season, but the Anstruther professional is on course for a bumper pay packet as he surged up the field during round two of the lucrative pro-am contest.
While Glasgow’s Marc Warren moved into a tie for fourth and James Byrne, the Banchory rookie, illuminated an eventful card with a hole-in-one, Murray sparkled in the delightfully pleasant conditions over the Old Course and posted a six-under 66 for an eight-under 136.
The 28-year-old finished in a share of 11th, four shots behind halfway pacesetters Michael Hoey, of Belfast, and Tommy Fleetwood, Southport’s Challenge Tour No.1, who had a 66 and a 63 at Kingsbarns respectively for a 132 tally and a one-stroke lead over former Open champion Louis Oosthuizen.
Murray, who earned promotion to the main circuit through last season’s Challenge Tour rankings, has found the step up pretty daunting. A 19th-place finish in April’s Hassan Trophy has been the Fifer’s best result in a schedule of 23 events that has included 14 missed cuts.
He currently languishes down in 183rd on the Race to Dubai rankings with around £50,000 to his name, and would need a fifth place or better on Sunday night to propel himself into the card-retaining safety zone of the top 115. The former Scottish Amateur champion is not one for pouring over the grim statistics, though.
“The way I see it, I have lost my card and I need to win it back,” said Murray, who ignited his purposeful round with six birdies in 10 holes from the fifth. “That’s the only way that I can look at it. It’s so bad that I can’t even look at the order of merit. There’s no point. That would drive you suicidal. Seriously though, if I started looking at that and thinking about what I need to do and get too engrossed in that, then you are beaten before you start. If I can finish high enough here, then I can get the card back in one go.”
Like Murray, Warren, buoyed by a five-under 67 on the Old Course that hoisted him on to the 10-under 134 mark, is in a fairly perilous position on the order of merit at 151st. The two-time tour winner, who lost his full playing rights at the end of last season, has been forced to go cap in hand to tournament organisers asking for invitations to bolster his schedule. It’s the golfing equivalent of Oliver Twist begging for more workhouse gruel.
“I’m saying ‘hello’ to anybody who walks past me this week in the off-chance they might know somebody that might get me into more tournaments,” confessed the 30-year-old, who bolstered his title assault with a five-under back-nine of 31. “It’s not a good situation to be in, relying on invitations, but I’ve been in this position all year. I would much rather take care of it myself though, than rely on others.”
As Warren and Murray made hay while the sun shone in St Andrews, Byrne, playing in his first main tour event as a pro, emerged from a turbulent round at Carnoustie with a one-under 71 for a six-under 138, which dropped him from one stroke off the pace at the start of play to six behind.
The wheels had began to shoogle with a double-bogey 7 on the sixth, when he lashed his tee-shot out of bounds left of Hogan’s Alley, yet the salvage operation was spectacular. He birdied the 12th, aced the 174-yard 13th with a seven-iron, before holing a raking putt of 40 feet at the 14th for an eagle 3 to move briefly up to third on the standings. It was uplifting stuff, but the purple patch petered out with a bogey at the 16th and a crippling triple-bogey 7 on the 18th when he again battered his tee-shot out of bounds.
“Two mental lapses on six and 18 have cost me five shots and that’s disappointing,” lamented Byrne.
At the sharp end of affairs, Fleetwood, fresh from victory in the recent Kazakhstan Open on the Challenge Tour, blasted a rousing, bogey-free, nine-under 63 that was just a shot off the Kingsbarns course record set by Lee Westwood in the 2003 Dunhill event.
Alongside Hoey, a two-time tour winner, the highly rated Fleetwood, a former Walker Cup player and the runner-up in the 2008 Amateur championship at Turnberry, finds himself as the unlikely co-leader of a field that contains five of the world’s top six. The 20-year-old is used to taking centre stage, however. He was a budding actor and earned an A pass in GCSE drama having played Macbeth in his school’s play.
“If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me,” mumbled Macbeth. Fleetwood might get that chance at the home of golf this weekend.
nick rodger
golf correspondent
at st andrews
nick.rodger@heraldandtimes.co.uk
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