Ken Borland

Paul Lawrie emerged as the midway leader of the Nedbank Golf Challenge on Friday after another day of tough scoring at the Gary Player Country Club.

Lawrie shot a three-under-par 69 in the second round to move to four-under overall, a one-stroke lead over Germany’s Martin Kaymer, who matched the Scotsman’s 69 – the best two rounds of the day.

South Africans Charl Schwartzel and Louis Oosthuizen are two strokes further back, in a tie for third on one-under-par with Italy’s Francesco Molinari and American Bill Haas.

But on a day in which the golfers continued to be agitated by a swirling wind and thick semi-rough, it was the consistent if conservative play of Lawrie and Kaymer that brought the greatest reward.

Lawrie played beautifully in the tough conditions, his only dropped shot coming on the par-four 15^th, and the 43-year-old was understandably content with his position midway through the $5 million tournament.

“I played nicely again. I struggled with the driver so I hit quite a few three-woods, which was a strong club for me today. I gave myself chances and I putted a lot better today.

“This course is demanding off the tee and you’ve got to be in play if you hope to go for the pins. It’s important to drive well, it’s pretty tough out there. The wind is swirling, chopping and changing, and it’s difficult to get your distance right,” Lawrie said.

But with no one being able to conquer Sun City’s famed course, the leaderboard is bunched and Kaymer said the weekend shootout was an appetizing prospect.

“There are eight golfers within five shots, so that’s quite nice. If you play good and a few putts drop, then you can shoot five or six-under, so nobody can relax,” Kaymer said.

Schwartzel struggled to find his best game but kept himself in contention by shooting a 71 that left him on one-under-par.

Oosthuizen joined him half-an-hour later with a birdie on the 18^th hole, while Haas needed an inward nine of just 33 shots to also finish in the tie for third.

Haas was the joint overnight leader with fellow NGC rookie Nicolas Colsaerts, but they both discovered just why a debutant has not won at Sun City since Mark McNulty in 1986.

Colsaerts, who shot a 70 on the first day, made a disastrous start to Friday’s second round with a double-bogey seven on the second hole and a triple-bogey at the par-four third hole, while Haas double-bogeyed the first and dropped further shots at the seventh and ninth holes, before fighting back well.

The long-hitting Belgian finished with a 78 and a tie for 10^th on four-over-par, eight shots off the pace.

Two-time Masters champion Bernhard Langer on Thursday made an impassioned defence of long putters, saying they were part of the “progression of the game”.

The Royal and Ancient Golf Club (R&A) and the United States Golf Association (USGA), the sport’s two leading rulemakers, on Wednesday announced a proposal for a ban on long putters being anchored to the body.

Langer, who suffered from career-threatening putting “yips” in the late 1980s and reverted to a belly putter in 1997, said he was opposed to the decision which could ban the practice of long putters being anchored to the player’s chest, stomach or chin by 2016.

“I am disappointed and I do not understand why they are banning it now after 35 years. If there is anything illegal about it, why did they not stop it right away?

“If you are talking about the history of the game and that long putters are not part of the history of the game, what about big metal drivers, two-piece balls or hybrids? Let’s face it, it is a progression of the game,” Langer said at Sun City on Thursday, where he was leading the Champions Challenge, the seniors’ portion of the Nedbank Golf Challenge.

Bill Haas, the American who is the co-leader of the Nedbank Golf Challenge after the first round, has used a belly-putter in the past and he believes the rule disallowing anchoring is fair.

“I had a lot of success with a belly putter last year, but then I became worse with it for a while. I don’t think it makes putting much easier, but it may be the wrong way to play the game. You should be putting with your hands and the putter should not be anchored. There’s a way to putt, but if people want to use a long putter, they should use them. I’m happy with my short putter now, it makes it more fun,” Haas said.

Langer pointed out that, although three of the last five major champions have used long putters, the game’s rulemakers have done nothing to halt the influence of technology in other areas, particularly drivers.

“They have never banned drivers, that is what they should be doing. Are these big metal drivers part of the history of the game, balls going for hundreds of yards?”, the former world number one said.

The rulemakers are apparently concerned that it is not just older golfers turning to the longer putters as a last resort to cure the yips, but younger players who are now taking advantage of the anchoring method. Fourteen-year-old Chinese golfer Guan Tianlang used a belly putter in his recent victory at the Asia Pacific Amateur and earned himself a place at next year’s Masters in the process.

Sweden’s Carl Pettersson uses a broomstick putter and is also in the Sun City field, but he declined to attend a press conference when it became clear he was going to be asked about the proposed new ruling.

Haas said despite the threatened outlawing of the practice, he did not see it as cheating and, apart from Pettersson, he mentioned a duo of recent major winners in Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson who use the long putter.

“I’ve heard Webb talking and he says that stats show that the top putters don’t use belly putters,” Haas said.

The proposal will undoubtedly give birth to heated debate over the next couple of years, with the rules only being changed after a long period of consultation.

American rookie Bill Haas was building a significant lead during his first round at the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City on Thursday, but two bogeys in his last three holes saw the leaderboard concertina on a gruelling day at the Gary Player Country Club.

With a tricky, shifting breeze blowing around the Pilanesberg valleys and brutal semi-rough waiting to punish anything slightly off line, Haas showed he had the stomach for the fight.

The 30-year-old son of distinguished American golfer Jay Haas, who is also at Sun City playing in the Champions Challenge for the seniors, Bill Haas had two loops of 35 for a two-under-par 70 that left him level with Belgium’s Nicolas Colsaerts at the top of the leaderboard.

Colsaerts, an extraordinarily long hitter who reined himself in on Thursday, had the most consistent round of the day with just one bogey, and he closed the gap on Haas with birdies on the 10^th and 11^th holes.

South Africa’s Louis Oosthuizen, Scotsman Paul Lawrie and England’s Lee Westwood are on their coat-tails on one-under-par, while Francesco Molinari, Martin Kaymer, Peter Hanson, Charl Schwartzel and Carl Pettersson are all on par.

With the intense heat only adding to the discomfort, it was a day for intestinal fortitude rather than flashy golf.

And Haas had approached the last three holes well-pleased with himself as he sat on four-under-par, leading by two.

“I’d done well to get to four under, there was a bit of breeze out there, the wind showed its teeth today after being pretty docile before. It’s a good, tough course, and you had to drive it in the fairway because the rough just seems so much more penal here. Other than the finish, I took a lot out of my round,” Haas said.

And part of the Gary Player Country Club’s brutality was that the moment a golfer relaxed and thought he was cruising, the course bit back. With a vengeance.

“The 15^th is one of the tougher driving holes, but I hit driver and a wedge to six feet for birdie, so maybe I was too confident and I pulled my drive on 16,” Haas said.

That led to his first bogey since the third hole and then, on the 18th, his tee shot found the left rough. His second then found more rough just short of the greenside bunker. Haas was unable to chip on to the green at the first attempt and his second chip rolled 10 feet past the hole.

“I was very happy to make that putt for bogey! But if I’d hit it into the bunker in the first place, I’d probably have made four,” Haas complained.

Justin Rose, the highest-ranked golfer in the field, was another who paid the price for getting ahead of himself as he ended the first day second-from-bottom after a 73.

Having surged up the leaderboard with successive birdies on the par-fives around the turn, he then bogeyed the 11^th, 12^th and 13^th holes. His troubles started on the dogleg par-four 11^th when he tried to take the “Tiger-line” over the trees on the left, came up short and landed behind a tree. His second rebounded off the tree, going 40 metres backwards, and his fall from grace had begun.

Colsaerts turned 30 two weeks ago but has had the life experience to make him a font of wisdom. An immensely talented golfer who won his European Tour card when he was just 18, the party scene derailed his career for a few years before he began to fulfil his promise.

“I feel like I’ve led a few different lives,” he is quoted as saying by the official tournament brochure.

A top-20 finish in the Race to Dubai in 2011 was followed by victory in the World Matchplay Championship and a place in Europe’s Ryder Cup team, Colsaerts playing a key role in their triumph.

Being able to quite literally “drive for show” also carries its temptations, but Colsaerts showed admirable maturity on Thursday.

“I didn’t use a very aggressive game plan, even with the driver when I used it. I think I played like everyone else, hitting the same spots, because you were better off hitting an iron from the fairway than a lob-wedge out of the kikuyu rough. I probably played close to my best in terms of management off the tee,” Colsaerts said.

Oosthuizen, sporting a Movember moustache that would surely be the pride of Bloemfontein, was the most impressive of the South Africans with a perfect back nine that included birdies on the 10^th and 18^th holes.

It could have been a totally different story for South Africa’s highest ranked golfer as he followed up a birdie on the par-five second hole with three bogeys, before settling himself with a brilliant birdie on the par-four eighth.

Ten golfers finishing within two shots of the lead told the story of a day when no one was able to conquer a course that takes sadistic delight in exposing and magnifying the smallest of errors.

Which is perfect for what is billed as “Africa’s Major” – what is still, for the time being, the most lucrative tournament on the toughest continent in the world.

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