Westwood regains lead

Lee Westwood overcame a double bogey to regain the outright lead when golf’s richest event, the £4.5million Players Championship in Florida, resumed briefly today.

But world number one Vijay Singh faced a real battle to hit back from his bad hole – a quadruple-bogey eight.

Because of rain only 44 minutes’ play had been possible on Friday and with officials deciding that placing of the ball was now necessary on the saturated fairways the second round began all over again.

Westwood had not teed off when the Friday suspension came, but when the moment came for him to try to follow up his sparkling opening 65 he was off a flyer with birdie putts of 25 and 10 feet on the first two greens.

That put the Worksop golfer, not even good enough to qualify for the event the last two years, one ahead of overnight leader Steve Jones, but trouble was just around the corner.

Forced to chop out of the rough on the 384-yard fourth he then hit his third shot into the back bunker and by failing to get up and down a six went on his card.

It took next to no time for Westwood, now back up to 23rd in the world after crashing out of the top 250 four years ago, to get his title bid back on track, however.

After making a 10-footer at the sixth to go back alongside Jones – one of the day’s later starters – he converted an 18-foot chance on the next to return to nine under just before an approaching thunderstorm forced play to be halted again.

Singh, who did by far the best of golf’s ‘Big Four’ in the first round, had improved to joint fourth by the time he came to the 447-yard 18th, his ninth.

But the Fijian pulled not just one but two drives into the lake lining the hole and slumped instantly to 39th place and alongside Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, who had yet to tee off again.

Just over three-and-a-half hours’ play had been possible and it was certainly action-packed. Bob Tway climbed into a share of second place, but then put two balls in the water on the island green 17th and with a triple-bogey six there and bogey on the next tumbled to 24th.

Fellow American Vaughan Taylor had four birdies in seven holes to stand fourth, but also found the lake on the 17th, while Sergio Garcia, standing in a tie for fifth, double-bogeyed the 10th and dropped to 14th.

N. Ireland's Graeme McDowell was making his presence felt for all the right reasons, playing the first eight holes of the back nine in five under and joining former Walker Cup teammate Luke Donald in fourth spot.

McDowell was not even in the tournament until he finished joint second with Singh in last week’s Bay Hill Invitational and moved into the world’s top 50.

Ernie Els, meanwhile, was happy about the cancellation of Friday’s play – he was in danger of double-bogeying the first – but was still under threat of missing the halfway cut. Els this time doubled the sixth and with seven to play was level par, the predicted cut mark.

The intention was to complete the second round before nightfall so that a decision could then be taken on whether to go for 36 holes tomorrow, possibly with only the leading 60 and ties surviving the halfway cut rather than the usual 70, or schedule a Monday finish.

But with next week’s tournament – the final warm-up for the Masters, of course - only an hour’s flight away in Atlanta play could even go on until Tuesday if necessary.

“We’re keeping all our options open,” said tournament director Mark Russell, who is getting used to making such decisions this season. The Players is the seventh event of the 13 so far on the 2005 US Tour to suffer a delay.

Darren Clarke hit into the lake on the 11th for a bogey six and with nine to go was one over, the same mark as Paul Casey, while David Howell and Justin Rose were in bigger trouble.

Howell, who could not count his birdie at the 11th yesterday, was still two over with five left, while Rose had played five holes in one under, but that merely lifted him to four over.