Saturday, August 04, 2007

Gleneagles Scottish PGA championship climax tomorrow

LOFTUS LEADS ORR BY ONE SHOT
GOING INTO FINAL ROUND

For the second year in a row the stage is set for a great finish to the £55,000 Gleneagles Scottish PGA golf championship over the PGA Centenary course tomorrow.
Mark Loftus (Cowglen) was one of six players to score a day’s best one-under-par 72 in a wild southwesterly wind and he slipped past playing partner and halfway leader David Orr (East Renfrewshire) into a one-stroke lead at four-under-par 215.
Orr had a 76 for 216 and it looks like a straight fight between them over the final 18 holes for the £8,800 first prize although Craig Lee (All Golf Swing Centre), who lost to Dean Robertson in a play-off for the title 12 months ago, and David Patrick (Mortonhall) will have something to say about that assumption.
They are on 218, only two shots off the pace and over this Jack Nicklaus-designed “mini monster” course with knee-high rough, anything can happen, especially if the wind blows again.
For instance, David Orr’s overnight three-stroke lead disappearned over over the first three holes with a double bogey at the first and a bogey at the third while Loftus emphasised the swign with a birdie at the second.
“The wind made it a nightmare out there,” said Loftus who has not won a 72 hole event since the Scottish Champion of Champions as an amateur in 2001.
“It was at least a three-club wind into your face. I was needing a seven-iron where I would normably used a gap wedge. I think David and I would have shaken off the field but for that wind.”
The Scottish PGA officials had shown some mercy on the field by moving some of the tees forward before the start of play, recognising that the course as it stood was too long and too tough. They reduced its length by some 200 yards, below the intimidating 7,000yd mark.
But no time of course to use a scythe to the long grass bordering the fairways, left to grow with the European Tour event – the Johnnie Walker Classic – coming up at the end of August over the same track.
“I knew it was going to a long, long day in that wind,” said Orr. “But I didn’t let my head go down when I lost by three-shot lead after only three holes.
“If you had told me last week that I would go into the final round at Gleneagles only one shot off the pace, I would have taken it. So I can hardly complain now that that’s the position. I’ve known Mark for years.
I know his game. He knows mine. I will be going out to enjoy myself on Sunday and if I hole a few putts, which I didn’t do in the third, round, then I could just about win it”
Loftus was five under par for the par-5s - an eagle at the ninth and birdies at the second, 12th and 18th.
He also bogeyed the fourth, sixth, seventh and 14th as he and Orr struggled for supremacy in an almost match-play situation.
Orr had a double bogey from a bunker at the first, dropped another shot at the third and yet another with three putts at the seventh. A birdie put him out in 39 (three over). Another birdie at the 11th helped to offset the bogeys that were to come - at the 17th and 18th.

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