Hanson closes the gap
Peter Hanson, the Swede who holed-in-one in a play-off to qualify for the US Open last month, did not need anything as dramatic as that to cut Martin Kaymer’s lead to just one shot at the French Open Alstom in Paris today.
With birdies at the 10th and 13th – he resumed on the back nine – Hanson moved to eight under par and into solo second place.
Kaymer, who started the event with a course record-equalling 62 yesterday, was among the late starters in the second round, as was Padraig Harrington, who probably needed to improve two or even three strokes on his opening 72 to avoid a fifth successive missed cut.
Another Swedish player drawing attention to himself this morning was Mikael Lundberg – but for a very different reason.
Lundberg ran up a sextuple bogey nine on the short second over the lake and brought back memories of the 1994 world amateur championship on the course. He was leading Tiger Woods with a hole to play and then ran up a 10.
With Italian Alessandro Tadini taking a quadruple bogey seven and David Frost, Martin Erlandsson and former winner Malcolm Mackenzie all having double bogey fives the 213-yard second looked like being the place for thrills and spills.
However, Irish Open amateur winner Shane Lowry birdied it to move to three under par and was on course to make his first cut as a professional in his fourth start.
