Weather holds up Westwood and McDowell charge

Lee Westwood led golf’s richest event, the £4.5million Players Championship in Florida, when more bad weather hit Sawgrass today.

And the thunderstorms also stopped Graeme McDowell in his tracks after a spectacular charge into joint fourth place at the sport’s unofficial fifth major.

With a bad Sunday forecast the tournament is heading for a Monday or even Tuesday finish. If that happens it will be the first time in a quarter of a century that any event on the US Tour has gone into a sixth day.

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.

It was halted once more after just over three-and-a-half hours’ play, but what an eventful period it was.

Westwood, one behind American Steve Jones after his opening 65, leapfrogged over him with birdie putts of 25 and 10 feet on the first two greens.

But the Worksop golfer, not even good enough to qualify for the event the last two years, then had a double-bogey six on the 384-yard fourth. Forced to chop out of the rough he hit his third shot into the back bunker and failed to get up and down.

However, 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.

After making a 10-footer at the sixth he converted an 18-foot chance on the next to return to nine under par, one ahead of Jones (yet to resume) and Zach Johnson.

The suspension of play came just as Right Approach, the horse he has a share in, was finishing third at the Dubai World Cup meeting. That brought a reward of £145,000 for the owners, but Westwood has now given himself a great chance to earn £800,000 here.

McDowell, resuming on the back nine, had birdies at the 10th, 12th, 13th, 14th and long 16th, where he chipped dead.

Not even in the tournament until he finished joint second with Vijay Singh in last week’s Bay Hill Invitational and moved into the world’s top 50, McDowell was alongside former Walker Cup teammate Luke Donald, still waiting to follow up his Thursday 66.

As for Singh, he crashed from fourth to 39th in spectacular fashion, hitting two drives into the lake on the 447-yard 18th, his ninth.

The world number one was seven adrift as a result and had slumped alongside Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, who had yet to tee off again.

Singh was not alone to suffer a big setback. 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.

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.

As for what happens to the event now tournament director Mark Russell had said: “We’re keeping all our options open.” He is getting used to such situations. 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.