Donald makes hole-in-one
Luke Donald may have had to wait an extra hour to resume his bid for the BMW Championship at Wentworth today, but it was worth the wait – he holed-in-one at the second hole.
The shot, with a seven-iron, spun into the cup to the cheers of the few spectators braving the miserably wet conditions and took Donald into a two-stroke lead at seven under par.
It was the first ace the 28-year-old has had on the European tour – but while it came on the same hole where Isao Aoki famously won a house at Gleneagles in an early World Match Play Championship, the prize of a BMW sports car is on offer at the short 14th this week.
Donald had been one of four overnight leaders following an opening 67 and while Nick Dougherty remained five under after two pars South African Andrew McLardy bogeyed the third and was still four under after seven hours. Paul Casey was just teeing off again.
After a week of heavy rain the latest downpour led to officials not only delaying the start for 60 minutes, but also changing the hole locations on three of the greens – the first, fourth and 16th – so that they were in drier positions.
But it looked like being a stop-start day with parts of the West Course already saturated and the players preparing to tee off had to dodge puddles on the practice putting green.
Donald had been critical of the course set-up for the opening round, saying: “The European Tour were cautious. I think you would not have seen that in America.
“It really didn’t seem to play too difficult. I was thinking coming down the 18th that when I do play in Europe the courses generally are a little more generous off the tee, the rough isn’t quite as thick and they don’t tuck the pins quite as much as they do on the US Tour.
“You can short-side yourself out here and still get up and down and make par and it’s not too big of a deal.
“At the US Open you’re not going to get away with it. I think that is part of the reason why we haven’t been very successful in majors, especially the US Open.”
The last winner of that title was Tony Jacklin in 1970 and no European has won any major since Paul Lawrie at the 1999 Open.
Tournament director David Garland pointed out, however, that the tee on the third had been moved forward to over 70 yards because otherwise drives would have been landing on an unplayable part of the fairway.
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