British duo lead field in soggy Sawgrass

The £4.5million Players Championship had two Europeans at the top of the halfway leaderboard for the first time in the event’s 32-year history today.

Delighted though Luke Donald and Lee Westwood were to find themselves in that lofty position, they still had 33 holes to play when yet another thunderstorm forced play to be suspended at 2.30pm, with the last round having already been rescheduled for Monday.

Donald added a 68 to his opening 66, going out after lunch a two-putt birdie on the long second which lifted him to 11 under par.

He needed that to stay alongside 40-year-old Joe Durant, who birdied the first, but Westwood had to work hard for three opening pars to be one behind along with defending champion Adam Scott and Durant’s fellow Americans Tim Herron and Zach Johnson.

Ulsterman Graeme McDowell was still very much in the hunt, holing from off the green at the third and at eight under he was in a share for eighth.

Padraig Harrington, runner-up here for the last two years and winner of his first US Tour title two weeks ago, fell back, first with a second-round 73 and then by going to the turn in 37. At three under the Dubliner was in a tie for 40th.

As for the sport’s “Fab Four”, Phil Mickelson was the only one threatening to force himself into the heart of the action. The Masters champion was joint 13th, while Ernie Els was lying 32nd and both Vijay Singh and Tiger Woods were 52nd.

Earlier the battle for the £800,000 first prize was very nearly overshadowed by Woods’ battle to survive the cut, which he did in the end with nothing to spare.

Woods, struggling with his driver, had a double-bogey seven on the 535-yard 11th and dropped back to one under.

That was the cut-off mark, but after a birdie on the next the world number two, whose last missed cut on the US Tour was in the 1997 Canadian Open, could afford a closing bogey and still squeezed through.

Westwood, who did not qualify for this event in either of the last two years, posted his rounds of 65 and 69 yesterday but Donald still had five to play after three hours were lost on top of Friday’s wash-out.

The former Walker Cup star played them in one under, grabbing a birdie at the long 16th despite hooking his drive into the trees.

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

“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 – he acknowledged more fortune at the 16th.

The ball was 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.

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.

Darren Clarke and Nick Faldo were one under after five and nine holes, but Justin Rose missed the cut by one, Paul Casey by two, David Howell by three and Ian Poulter by five after a quintuple-bogey nine on the 14th.

“I pulled my drive in the bunker, then lost a ball,” stated Poulter, one over at the time.

“That meant dropping another in the sand and that was game, set and match.”

His fourth shot flew right and it took him three more just to make the green.

His was not the worst score of the day, though. Australian Andre Stolz put three drives in the lake at the 447-yard last for an 11 – two more than the tournament record.

Before the third round Donald put a case for Colin Montgomerie to be given a spot at the Masters in Augusta in two weeks.

Montgomerie finished fourth in Indonesia today after a closing round of 60, but needed second place to have a chance of climbing into the world’s top 50.

“It’s a shame the Ryder Cup and President’s Cup teams don’t get in,” commented Donald.

“But I guess it makes it more of an elite event.”