Lyle charge halted by tree trouble

In a real blast from the past Sandy Lyle made a charge through the field in the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles today – until his ball got stuck up a tree.

After making his first halfway cut since the same event last year the former Open and Masters champion, now 48 and playing mostly on invitation after losing his European and US Tour cards, covered the first 17 holes of his third round in four under.

That left Lyle six behind his fellow Scot Colin Montgomerie – two ahead of England’s Paul Casey overnight – but with a par five to come it had all the makings of his best round since a 67 in the Open at St Andrews last July.

Then, however, came his final drive, which flew into a tree right of the fairway and could not be found in time despite nearly 50 people being involved in the search.

Lyle thought it might have rebounded into the rough but after the permitted five minutes was up and he had gone back to the tee to hit another ball the original fell out of the branches.

The hole cost him a double-bogey seven and with a 71 he was back deep in the pack on the two-under mark of 217.

“Shame. A four would have made a huge difference and that knocked the wind out of my sails,” said Lyle, without a victory since 1992 and with only two top-10 finishes since 1995.

“That 18th’s been a costly hole so far.” He took six in the second round.

First change on the leaderboard came from Argentina’s Andres Romero birdied the first and moved into joint third place on seven under.

He had been only one behind Montgomerie at nine under yesterday, but then fell back.