Clarke breezes through field

The foothills in which the golf course of Montecastillo is situated - surrounded by barren landscape and a seemingly endless array of building machinery - are as far removed from the links terrain of Royal Portrush, where Darren Clarke learned to craft wind shots, as it is possible to get. Yet, when Clarke looked out of his bedroom window yesterday morning and saw that the trees were swaying, he knew it was his kind of day.

"With the wind blowing, I knew I had a good chance to get myself back into the tournament," he remarked. "I love playing in the wind. You have to hit a lot of drivers back in your stance, and show a lot of imagination, but it is even tougher on a course like this, compared to a links, because you can't chase the ball in to the green. You have to fire it in over water and all sorts of stuff, so it really is very tough."

Clarke, though, used his shot-making skills, and a fair degree of patience on the greens, to carve out a second round 68 for six-under-par 138 which lifted him right into the thick of the action. His demeanour at the finish was some way removed from the smouldering looks that accompanied him off the third green on the long walk to the fourth tee-box. After starting with a birdie on the first, he contrived to give the shot straight back with a bogey at the second (where he was in a greenside bunker) and then missed an eight footer for birdie on the par five third.

"I was thinking that the putter had gone cold again. I've been known to lose the head in the past when things like that happened to me but Billy (Foster) calmed me down. I knew it was important to keep my patience. I just hung in and tried to give myself chances and a few started dropping in," he said.

His round really kick-started on the sixth where he rapped in a six-footer. On the seventh, a 432 yards par four, the tee box is at one of the highest and most exposed areas of the course and, with the wind blowing so hard, the drive is one of the most difficult of the round. Clarke couldn't have placed his any better, and then hit a six-iron approach out over the water to the right and brought it back in to 15 feet and holed the putt.

However, on the ninth a 20 foot eagle putt lipped out and he missed a short birdie putt back. "The putter was almost going swimming off the next tee," he said. It's a good job he kept it in his bag. He rolled in another birdie on the 10th and finished off an extremely solid day's work with another birdie on the 16th.