On a day where virtually nine hours were lost to a waterlogged course, Joakim Bäckström, Markus Brier and Alvaro Quiros share the overnight lead in the second round of the Telecom Italia Open.
The trio all ended on ten under par, Brier and Quiros having completed eight and ten holes respectively of their second rounds before darkness fell while Bäckström owed his lofty position to his first round, course record 62, the 29 year old Swede not having hit a shot all day Friday.
Brier, the winner of last month’s Volvo China Open in Shanghai, started the day in second place, a shot adrift of Bäckström but drew level with the lanky Swede thanks to birdies at his opening hole – the tenth – and the 14th, which nullified a bogey five at the 13th.
Quiros, the winner of the Alfred Dunhill Championship in South Africa last December, started the day in a share of fourth place but elevated to prominence quickly with a birdie at the 13th and an eagle three at the first – his final hole of the day.
While the above trio went to bed happy with their overall position, for most involved in the 64th staging of the Telecom Italia Open, it was a frustrating day spent kicking their heels in the clubhouse.
The second round got underway as normal at 7.30am and with the course in good condition, despite the heavy overnight rain in the Milan area, no preferred lies were in operation – a similar situation to that in Thursday’s opening round.
But a torrential downpour shortly after 8.00am began to flood the course, forcing tournament organisers to bring players back to the clubhouse at 8.20am. Thereafter the weather worsened and it rained constantly until 2.30pm, over 50 mm (two inches) of rain having fallen in that time.
Having given the course time to recover, it was deemed play would be possible again at 5.15pm, however the 50 minutes of play which had happened in the morning – with no player having completed more than three holes – was declared null and void due to fact that preferred lies were needed to enable play to start again. Hence all players began back on the first or tenth tees.
Andy McFee, Senior Referee of The European Tour, and Tournament Director José Maria Zamora took time to explain the thinking of the tournament committee.
“It crossed my mind (to play preferred lies from the outset) but I was brought up in the school of mind that people don’t want to use preferred lies if they don’t have to,” said McFee.
“In hindsight we perhaps should have put it on right away but I was influenced by the fact we had a pretty good day yesterday after three inches of rain the day before. The difficulty we had was that if we wanted to play today, which we do, we did not have the drying time (if preferred lies were not used).
“It is one of those things where you are not going to please everybody, you can’t do that. You have to make a judgment on what you think is the right thing to do and the right way forward. It will benefit some players, it might hurt others, but overall it will benefit everybody because we will have a much cleaner second round.”
Tournament Director Zamora agreed. “The majority of the players think it is all right,” said the Spaniard. “Obviously there will be some players who don’t think it is right but when I went into the Players Lounge to inform everyone, the reaction was quite positive.”
The players who completed part of their second rounds on Friday will now return and finish off early on Saturday morning – in position to play at 7.45am – before the latter half of the field – who did not play at all on Friday – begin their second rounds in the latter part of the morning.
Once all players have completed their second rounds, the cut will be made and, weather permitting, round three will begin. However, it will not begin before 5.00pm.
