Michael started the day with a one-stroke lead at –5 and played some superb golf. Last year’s Challenge Tour winner is shaping up as a real prospect. He made seven birdies in his round, the most memorable being on the 442-yard 2nd (his 11th). Finding the left-hand bunker with his tee shot, he played a 170-yard iron to five or six feet and putted out.
Michael’s putting was superb throughout the day, and it is testament to the challenge provided by the CBD Club greens that two of his dropped strokes came from missed short putts on the 4th and 9th holes. He also double-bogeyed the hardest hole on the course, the 14th.
His caddie Richard will be particularly disappointed by the dropped stroke on his final hole that cost him a lead of 2 strokes. Coming up the par-5 9th at nine-under, he sensibly laid up. Player after player had fallen short of the green in the misleading breeze from similar distance.
Richard judged the shot to be an 8-iron, a judgement that he backed under questioning from Michael. He was proved to be 100% correct when Michael hit his iron pin-high, followed by a good downhill putt from 20 feet. Caddie and player alike were therefore doubly disappointed when he missed the short uphill return.
Ireland’s Damien McGrane shares second place with Richard Finch after another quality round of 69 to match his opening 68, while England’s Oliver Wilson played the round of the tournament so far, a six-under par 66, to hold 4th place on his own at –6. All of the first day group on –4 are still in contention, with Markus Brier also making a move to –4 with a round of 69.
Shot of the day would normally have gone without question to Australia’s Alan Groom, who won himself a set of wheels with an ace on the 199-yard third that helped him to an overall score of –1.
But Michael Lorenzo-Vera’s playing partner, Malayan Zaw Moe, produced a quite extraordinary effort of his own. Having hooked his drive on the 18th into a pond on the 10th fairway, he found himself lying under six inches of water.
Perhaps inspired by the company of a Frenchman, and determined to show the Jean Van de Veldes of this world how it is done, he waded into the pond and proceeded to knock the ball cleanly out of the water, through a gap in the trees that separate the 10th and 18th holes, and back onto the middle of the fairway.
An iron and a wedge took him onto the green, but his first putt teetered on the edge and refused to drop for what would have been a remarkable par.
(China.org.cn by staff reporter David Ferguson April 19, 2008)
