Furyk, O'Hair share lead in Boston
BY Bruce Young | US PGA Tour | 2009 Deutsche Bank Championship | Round Two | 06 Sep 2009
Jim Furyk and Sean O’Hair share the lead after 36 holes at the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston, their 12 under par totals moving them two ahead of Retief Goosen and impressive PGA Tour Australian rookie Marc Leishman.
The six players at 9 under and in a share of 5th position include Australia’s John Senden while Geoff Ogilvy and Jason Day are in the group one shot further back.
While not at his peak in recent weeks, Furyk has not exactly played badly in that time and five birdies in his first six holes in yesterday’s opening round served notice that this is a golf course he enjoys.
“I will say definitely the first time I played the golf course, I was very uncomfortable on it as far as the look of it, where I was supposed to hit the ball, said Furyk. “I think they went back and redesigned it for the second event we were here. I talked a lot to the staff and the architect back in Ponte Vedra, and he convinced me to come out and give it a try and look at it again.”
“I thought it was a definite improvement, and I thought it was a nice upgrade.” And then when they’ve gone back in again and redesigned for the second time, I actually grew up in the northeast and it now tends to flow and look like a course up here does usually. Before, it had a little bit more of a modern TPC type look to it. The course hasn’t changed that much, but the appearance to me, it’s just everything is more appealing to my eye, I think. The last redo was a major upgrade; it really improved the golf course in playability and aesthetics, so I’m just more comfortable here now."
O’Hair played a stretch of eight holes in the middle of his round in 8 under to move to 13 under but a late bogey coast him the outright halfway lead. After a brilliant start to the season, O’Hair has not played well in the last two months but there have been reasons.
“Well, it all started basically at Colonial, said O’Hair. “I injured myself the Monday of Colonial, and oddly enough I actually hit the ball really nicely Thursday and Friday of Colonial, but it really kind of started getting painful on the weekend, and then had to pull out of Memorial. I got healthy before the U.S. Open and had the baby right after U.S. Open, so off the golf course, things were busy.”
“Then you put a couple of bad tournaments in there and then you kind of start losing your confidence a little bit. So I think a lot of it just had to do with mental. I think I’ve definitely been second-guessing myself out there and doing a lot of searching instead of just trusting what I’ve been working on and sticking to it.”
Leishman has all but assured himself of retaining his PGA Tour card for 2010 but a stretch of holes around the turn in today’s second round have created the opportunity for something even more significant. He played those five holes in 6 under which incorporated an outward nine of 29. Leishman needs a good week if he is to force his way inside the top 70 who will advance to next week’s BMW event in Chicago.
Amongst the other Australians and in addition to Leishman, Senden, Ogilvy and Day, Greg Chalmers at 5 under and Mathew Goggin at 2 under also made the cut.
