It never rains but it pours.
And at Gleneagles it absolutely lashed it down. The heavens opened and someone forgot to shut the flood gates as the Scottish PGA Championship squelched and splashed towards a drookit denouement. There is still unfinished business to attend to and 28 players need to finish their second rounds this morning after an already reduced event was disrupted further yesterday due to the unrelenting torrents from above. For the first time since 1966, when Eric Brown and John Panton shared the trophy, Scotland's national championship has been cut to just 36-holes after play was abandoned for the day at 3pm amid the kind of sodden, bitterly cold scenes that would have had the folk at Visit Scotland flinging themselves into the sea in resigned despair.
Chris Kelly, the Scottish PGA champion in 2003, and Paul McKechine, the former PGA EuroPro Tour No 1, lead the way on three-under aggregates of 139 and look unlikely to be caught by the remaining finishers this morning. A play-off beckons unless someone like Paul Lawrie returns today and conjures a rousing conclusion to his suspended second round. The Aberdonian, a two-time Scottish PGA champion, was 10 shots behind going into the last day of the 1999 Open at Carnoustie and won in a play-off but he had 18 holes in which to mount a recovery then. Today at the King's course he'll only have five to force a sudden-death shoot-out and he'll need to cover them in five-under just to tie the lead. That's providing he thaws himself out after a desperate day spent battling away in temperatures that would've cracked a clump of granite. "It was impossible and by the time we got to the 12th you couldn't hold the clubs as it was freezing," said Lawrie, who probably wished he'd headed out the European Tour's Mauritius Open this week instead of swinging in the rain on home soil. "It was ridiculous. Even my brolley broke."
Lawrie's fellow Aberdonian, Greig Hutcheon, endured an even more turbulent day as his hopes of a third Scottish title were drowned amid the deluge. The 42-year-old, who led after the opening round, had hauled himself on to the seven-under mark for the tournament through six holes but it all went to pot over a ruinous series of nine holes that saw the former European Challenge Tour winner spill 15 shots. The devastating debris included a quintuple nine on the 14th. "I took a 3-iron from the tee for safety and lost it and took another 3 iron for safety," he reported with a wry grimace. "A third 3-iron found the trees, I chipped out sideways , eventually got on the green and two putted. You couldn't hold the club it was so cold."
While all and sundry were left buffeted, battered and bedraggled, Kelly moved to the brink of a second Scottish championship success without hitting a ball yesterday. He was one of the very few who actually completed 36-holes before darkness fell on Monday night and his 66, bolstered by a run of birdies at 10, 11, 13 and 14 hoisted him to the front. McKechnie, meanwhile, returned early in the morning yesterday to complete his suspended second round and he put the finishing touches to a two-under 69 that left him in a tie at the top. Like Kelly, McKechnie will be at Gleneagles this morning to see what the remaining finishers can do and he is still wary about the menace posed by Lawrie. "Paul will be trying like a bear and if I was a betting man, I'd still fancy him to at least get in a play-off," he said.
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