14 year old Tianlang Guan was controversially penalised for slow play on Friday
Davy Gorman | Staff Writer
Australia’s Jason Day leads the Masters after an eventful Friday at Augusta National. His four under par 68 was enough to give him a six under par total and a one stroke lead over Fred Couples and Marc Leishman. A mixture of some tight pin positions and some tricky swirling winds lead to a much tougher day of golf than Thursday, with only three players in the top 20 breaking 70.
For much of the day, it looked like an early procession towards another Tiger Woods major win. The greatest front runner in history led the championship as he approached the 15th hole at Augusta where his round was derailed in the most unusual circumstances. Hitting an almost perfect wedge approach, his ball viciously struck the flag and bounced into Rae’s Creek in front of him. Tiger recovered well to bogey the hole but seemed rattled by the stroke of bad luck. He carded another bogey on the 18th hole to fall into a tie for seventh place. Despite this setback, the world number one is well placed to make a significant move tomorrow. Woods is joined in contention by world number two Rory McIlroy who turned his quest for a green jacket around with a magnificent eagle at the 8thhole after a poor start to the day, three more birdies in the back nine resulted in a two under par 70 to lie four back. He will be the only Irish player to play the weekend after Padraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell and Alan Dunbar failed to make the halfway cut.
No Australian has ever won the Masters but the Aussies will feel that their time has come with three of them in the top ten of the leaderboard. The young Australian, Jason Day, will be confident of his chances after finishing second here in 2011 as he looks to overcome that final hurdle on Sunday. His putting today left his rivals in his wake; he will be hoping to bring that form with the flatstick into the weekend. Unheralded Marc Leishman kept his position among the leaders along with fans favourite and veteran Fred Couples who rolled back the years once again to contend another Masters twenty one years after his win in 1992. It did however prove to be a difficult Friday for Thursday’s front-runners Dustin Johnson and Sergio Garcia, who both struggled to four over par 76s. Dustin Johnson reached seven under par at one point but languished to a back nine 40 while Garcia dumped three balls into the water on the same stretch of holes.
It was in conditions like this that once again the 14 year old Tianlang Guan impressed but not without controversy. The Chinese amateur occurred a one stroke penalty on the 17th hole for slow play. This was more remarkable since the last time a one-stroke penalty for slow play was assessed at a non-major PGA TOUR event was in 1995, when Glen Day suffered a one-stroke penalty in the third round of The Honda Classic. Slow play on tour is a recurring problem of PGA Tour events, for a 14 year old to be penalised for it when tour pros escape punishment for it every week was ridiculous. Luckily, Guan steadied himself and parred the final hole to make the 36 hole cut at the Masters. To put this achievement into context, Tiger Woods missed the cut at the Masters as an amateur at age 20. The hot prospect is now guaranteed to lift the Silver Cup on Sunday evening as the lowest scoring amateur to make the cut.
Tiger Woods also found himself at the heart of ‘dropgate’, a scandal over a drop shot on the 15th hole, which saw him awarded a two shot penalty, in effect from today. Considering the usual penalty for signing for the incorrect score is disqualification, it will be interesting to see what unfolds over the next few hours.
Others to watch out for today in what is an immensely packed leaderboard are the Fed-Ex Cup champion Brandt Snedeker, Englishmen Lee Westwood and Justin Rose, and erratic 2009 champion Angel Cabrera. Nineteen players lie within four shots of the lead heading into ‘Moving Day’ in what promises to be a topsy-turvy weekend on the south coast.
