It’s crazy golf from Willett...
But he still shares lead after wild round
FROM the Masters champion Danny Willett yesterday we had the round that had everything: brilliance, incompetence, fury, joy, even a dalliance with a rules violation.
In short, if you were one of the many thousands who followed all 18 holes of his extraordinary journey around the Wentworth estate, what an adventure you enjoyed at the BMW PGA Championship.
Willett ended up signing for a 68 and a 10-under-par halfway total that stood for much of the day until Australian Scott Hend eagled the final hole in the evening shadows to join him, followed by former US PGA champion YE Yang. As Willett said afterwards: ‘I’d have certainly taken that before the start.’
But the bald facts don’t begin to tell the half of it. Of an outward half so good he became the first man in the long history of the event to reach the turn in just 29 shots. He had three par fives to come and was playing so well anything appeared possible. It seemed as if the weekend’s play was destined to become one long lap of honour.
Talk about a round of two halves. The man without a single bogey in the tournament to that point had four during an untidy back nine, including three in a row when, as he ruefully put it: ‘It all started to mingle into one big pile of manure.’ Or a word like manure. Who could have predicted that following nine holes when he played the game as well as it can be played? The drives possessed laser-like accuracy, the iron shots finished within birdie range and the putts disappeared with bewitching regularity. The spectators must have had sore hands from clapping so much.
Then on the back nine the wind picked up a touch and he dropped his first shot at the 10th. At the par-five 12th he missed a tiddler. Down the 13th his group were put on the clock for slow play.
‘There were a couple of shots after that I should have backed off from because I wasn’t sure but it’s hard to do that when you’re being timed,’ said Willett.
At the 16th he drove into a fairway bunker and came up well short with his third shot. You could see his mind unravelling as he ranted at his caddie Jon Smart for what he considered a bad yardage.
Another poor tee shot at the long 17th left him under some branches and only able to hack out. Even that shot was filled with drama. As he pondered what to do, his sunglasses fell off his head and came precariously close to falling on his ball. If the ball had moved, it would have been a one- shot penalty. A shade fortunate, you might say.
It’s quite a jaunt from the 17th green to the 18th tee, and it was here Willett showed the mental strength of a major champion. He’s a naturally fast walker but here he slowed it to snail’s pace. ‘I can’t tell you what I was saying to myself but I used the time to gather my thoughts,’ he said.
It worked so well he struck two pure shots to stop the rot and set up the easiest of two-putt birdies. Out in 29 shots, back in 39. ‘There were certainly two very different tales out there,’ he said.
With some high-profile absentees, a lot of responsibility has been resting on Willett’s shoulders and how he has delivered to carry the event into the weekend. One week on from Rory McIlroy’s epic triumph in front of a home crowd at the Irish Open, Willett now has the opportunity to emulate the feat.
The in-form Spaniard Rafa Cabrera-Bello is five shots behind and can wrap up his Ryder Cup place with a good weekend, while Luke Donald will start six back after a 72, and Lee Westwood is seven adrift following a 70. Meanwhile, Ryder Cup captain Darren Clarke (left) announced three of his deputies for the match against the Americans in September and, as revealed in Sportsmail on Tuesday, they are Padraig Harrington Paul Lawrie and Thomas Bjorn. Two more will be announced after The Open in July.