Wachovia Championship round two: The devil has his day

The fact that we’ve got three joint leaders on six under sums it all up - this is the devil of a competition to read at the half way stage. The obvious temptation is to say Tiger Woods will run away with it. But a price of more than evens suggests I’m far from alone in harbouring doubts.

Tiger was none too convincing Friday, spraying the ball every which way off the tee to put himself in some hellish situations. He was lucky to get away with just one bogey on the round, although his putting was much better. Quite how he made four under has a lot of people scratching their heads.

Vijay Singh hardly had a heavenly day either, although his stats look far healthier than the day before. Maybe the cold conditions got to them.

It’s not too much of a surprise to see Arron Oberholser with them, despite a double bogey on the 12th. Although he’s not been doing much of late, and his last two visits here have been unproductive, losing a playoff to Joey Sindelar three years ago gives him form that makes a price of 17 interesting. It’s also intriguing to see Sindelar in the mix.

But what on earth is Ted Purdy suddenly doing up among the leaders of one of the year’s toughest competitions? He’s not exactly been much of a livewire since winning the Byron Nelson two years ago. A consistently hot putter is his key weapon.

Talk about a tough competition. It’s not many tournaments where you see eight withdrawals by the half way stage, including the likes of Sean O’Hair and Darren Clarke, not to mention the two disqualifications.

Someone could certainly do with trying to cut away from the pack Saturday, because the wind looks like kicking up on day four to make things interesting. It’s tempting to take Tiger on with a lay - at the very least it wouldn’t be too difficult to recover Sunday if he did streak away. And if he didn’t I’d look anywhere among the top 14 for someone to take over. Heck, even Phil Mickelson could make a run if he could just stop talking long enough. But in the end I think Saturday is for sitting on the sidelines and enjoying what should be one hell of a day’s golf.