Irish quartet still in with a shout

THOSE who wagered on Gary Murphy to be leading Irishman at the Open Championship have good reason to feel smug this morning!

While the three Ryder Cup heroes, Padraig Harrington, Darren Clarke and Paul McGinley all struggled to cope with the quirks and intricacies of the Royal St Georges links, the far more inexperienced Murphy remained composed and kept his head admirably to complete the 36 holes on five over par, six off the outright lead of Davis Love III, one ahead of Harrington and three clear of Clarke and McGinley.

The fascinating aspect about it all is that theoretically all four Irishmen are still there with a chance simply because everybody else in the field has also found it next to impossible to cope with the peculiar demands of this bone hard, bouncy links. “I’m quite astonished by that,” agreed Harrington. “At six over, I should be way down the field. While there are a lot of players ahead of me, I am still within seven shots of the lead. Unfortunately two dropped shots with pitching wedges cost me. Wow, anybody on three or four over is right in there and even six over, you never know.

“Conditions this afternoon were lovely but the greens got very hard and the pin positions were again very tough. Once you strayed more than twenty feet away from the hole, you were always coming up or over a tier. Any time you missed a green and had to chip, you were doing well to get it to six or eight feet and that’s probably why the scoring is so high.”

Harrington managed only one birdie, at the 4th, and just about everybody was picking up shots there. He had no difficulty explaining why: “I hit only three shots into greens looking for birdie; I was hitting into the green to make par because I didn’t have the confidence to fire at the flags. I left two shots out there and unless you’re playing great golf, you can’t afford that.”

Clarke was in far more amenable mood yesterday than on Thursday which is somewhat surprising considering that he only made the cut on the limit mark of eight over and generally speaking completely lacked the inspiration or the drive to do a whole lot about the mediocrity that has enveloped his game after good weeks at The K-Club (5th) and Loch Lomond (2nd).

The lowlight of another disappointing day came at the long 14th where he was one of the few to reach the front of the green with a cracking drive and three wood but somehow he contrived to take a bogey six. His match was on the clock at the time and he admitted to rushing his first putt from fifty feet, which had a double break, right off the back of the green and he eventually walked off with a bogey six! ‘Brainless’ was the description of that putt by Peter Alliss on BBC television. Clarke went on to drop another stroke at the 18th which meant he had survived into the week-end by the skin of his teeth.

“I hit it much better today but nothing seemed to go my way, what happened at the 14th was a classic case in point,” he said. “I played a lot of good shots and still walked off with bogeys and that is out of my control. I didn’t make enough birdies to get back into the tournament.”

Paul McGinley had bad vibes about the week from the moment he saw his starting times. He was out late on Thursday when the wind was really whipping up and early yesterday when the fine weather of later in the day still hadn’t arrived at Sandwich. Given that darkness precluded the completion of play on Thursday, there is a growing body of opinion that the R & A should opt for a two tee start. In spite of reservations about starting times, McGinley doesn’t agree.

“Starting every match at the 1st is just one of the quirks of the Open but it is also one of its traditions and I don’t want it changed,” he declared. “The luck of the draw balances itself out through the season and that was the way for me in 1996 when I was joint leader at the halfway stage. It was very important for me to make the week-end. After all, this is a major and only my fifth time in eleven championships for me to reach the week-end.”