Donald deals with weather delays

Luke Donald joined Ryder Cup team-mate Lee Westwood in the clubhouse lead at the Players Championship as Tiger Woods had to battle to stay alive and extend his amazing run of cuts made.

Donald added a 68 to an opening 66 achieved on Thursday morning after the last two days were badly affected by weather delays.

“I’ve lost track of time,” joked the 27-year-old. His second round had finished nearly 56 hours after his first round began.

He, Westwood and Joe Durant were all on the 10-under-par mark of 134, but out on the course Durant’s fellow American Tim Herron had six successive birdies from the eighth and with five to play led by one.

Woods, on the other hand, put himself in danger of a first missed cut in 140 US Tour events stretching back to the 1997 Canadian Open when he ran up a double-bogey seven on the long 11th.

The world number two’s drive was so off-line that after taking a penalty drop in the trees he needed a pitch of 87 yards to get the ball back on the fairway.

Missing the green with his fourth and taking three more to hole out left Woods on one under par, the predicted cut-off mark.

And although he came back with a birdie on the next, hitting his approach to four feet, he finished close to the lake with his tee shot to the short 13th and then needed a drop off a cart path on the next after another bad drive.

He got out of both of those holes with pars, but bogeyed the last after driving into rough again and missing a 14-foot putt for par.

Round in 73, he was one under par and lying 66th. As things stood that was just good enough, although there was a slight chance that if the weather intervened badly again the field would be sliced to only the top 60 and ties rather than the leading 70. That would put him out.

Padraig Harrington, runner-up the last two years, resumed on seven under par with the entire back nine to come and a chance to get right in the thick of things.

Instead the Dubliner, who did not want to come to the event this year with his 72-year-old father suffering from cancer, bogeyed the 11th, 13th and 14th to fall to 28th and six strokes off the pace.

Donald, meanwhile, was resting up before starting the third round around lunchtime – weather permitting. More thunderstorms were forecast and the tournament was now scheduled to finish on Monday.

“Delays are the same for everybody, but I’m glad to be done and in a good position,” he said.

After two lucky breaks in his first round – a narrow escape from the water on the 18th and a deflection off a tree to eight feet on the ninth, which he then birdied – the former Walker Cup star was fortunate again on the long 16th, his third hole of the day.

A hook into the trees left the ball resting against pine cones, but instead of having to just chop out onto the fairway he had a gap in front of him and could advance the ball 150 yards.

It was still a good shot to do it, however.

“You never know what the contact will be because of the cones. I had to draw it and if I didn’t it would have been in the water, but it worked out perfectly.”

He pitched to five feet for birdie and then parred the last two, although at the last it needed a nine-foot putt after he drove into the rough.

Herron's sparkling burst came to an abrupt halt with a double bogey six on the 14th, but that was still considerably better than Ian Poulter in the previous group.

Poulter pulled his drive, then found water and after taking a penalty drop he hit wildly over the other side and ran up a quintuple bogey nine. He went from one over to six over.