Scottish Open
With apologies to Maarten Lafeber, who shot a second-round 63 and leads Angel Cabrera by a stroke on 12 under par at the halfway stage of the Barclays Scottish Open, the fine play of the 30-year-old Dutchman was not the main talking point at Loch Lomond yesterday.
That honour went to Greg Owen and the convoluted saga that is the Englishman's in-and-out relationship with the 134th British Open Championship that will begin at St Andrews on Thursday.
It goes like this. Having entered for the championship, the US-based Owen, who lies 29th on the US PGA Tour money list with more than $1 million in prize money this year, decided to play in the International Final Qualifying (IFQ) tournament in New Jersey.
Later, under discreet pressure from the European Tour to play more on this side of the Atlantic, he withdrew from the IFQ and headed home.
Things got more complicated when the American Billy Mayfair, a fully exempt player, withdrew from the British Open. Mayfair's place should have gone to the highest-placed non-exempt player on the world-ranking list, specifically the 62nd-ranked Aaron Oberholser. But it didn't.
Like Owen, Oberholser had withdrawn from the IFQ and so, according to an unwritten R&A policy, he was ineligible for the newly available exempt spot. This was the fate that duly befell Owen, who is 66th in the world, and the 69th-placed Jeff Maggert. The lucky beneficiary ended up being the man in 70th spot, the former US PGA champion Bob Tway.
All of which did not impress Owen one bit.
"It's just disgraceful," he said yesterday, after completing a 66 that has him nine under par for two circuits of the stunningly picturesque Loch Lomond layout. "My management company spoke to the R&A and they said that, although nothing is written down, this is a decision they made earlier in the year. Explain that to me. It is just bureaucracy. It says it nowhere and they've just come up with it."
Just to make matters worse, had Owen gone to the IFQ, hit one shot and withdrawn (or entered this weekend's local final qualifying in Scotland) he would have been given the spot vacated by Mayfair.
"That's the stupid thing about it," he continued. "They don't ask you to complete the two rounds. They just ask you to tee it up. They would have been upset if I'd done that as well. You just can't please them."
Perhaps the only piece of positive news for Owen is that he can still make it to St Andrews as the leading player in this Scottish Open not already exempt for the Open. Of those ahead of him, only Lafeber is not assured of a trip to Fife.
Actually winning the tournament may be a little harder, however. On a day ideal for low scoring, with pleasant temperatures, little wind and soft under foot, more than a few of golf's bigger names made potentially significant moves up the crowded leaderboard. Such luminaries as Darren Clarke, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Ian Poulter and Ernie Els are all within six shots of the leader.
Perhaps the most heartening of those was Clarke. The Ulsterman, competing in only his second event since returning to the tour from a month spent tending to his ill wife, Heather, sits on 10 under par alongside Alastair Forsyth and Jonathan Lomas after a round of 65 that included a paltry 22 putts.
Though he was clearly happy with his score and with his position relative to the leader, Clarke was less impressed with the quality of his ball-striking after a round that he felt was basically "target golf".
"I hit a lot of good shots, a lot of poor shots," he claimed. "I've got to go to the range now and figure out my swing. I don't quite have it at the moment. If I continue to hit the ball like this, I'm not going to do so well."
