HONG KONG—Another beautiful day for the 2nd round of The PGA Tour Clearwater Bay Open on Friday Nov 4. Sunshine all day and only a slight breeze should have made the course a little easier than on Day one when the breeze was stronger. However leader Alexander Kang starting day 2 at -6 picked up just 1 shot on the front 9 and maintained level par on the back 9 to finish at -7, 3rd equal with Li Jianshan of China who bettered his day 1 performance by 4 shots.
Two Chinese players are out in front, both on -9. Chen Zihao picked up 7 shots with 5 birdies and an eagle on the par 5, 15th. He carded a blistering 31 on the front 9 and 32 on the back 9 for a consistent for a consistent performance. The other leader on -9 is Yuan Tian who picked up 4 shots in the 2nd round.
Michael Skelton of England had an up and down round but improved his first round score by 2 shots to end the day in 5th spot on -6. There are 3 players tied in 6th place at -5: Ouyang Zheng, Scott Barr of Australia and Sam Chien of the USA; and 6 on -4. Charlie Saxon of USA improved 4 shots on the day and Daniel Nisbit of Australia and Thomas Johnson both shot -3 on day 2.
Most of the leading players performed a shot or 2 under the par 70 with a little jockeying of positions down to the 71 player cut at +4 – quite high cut score.
On day 3 there will still be 3 players per flight with the top 12 flights starting at Hole 1 (8:25 to 10:30) and the other 12 flights starting at the 10th (8:30 to 10:20).
The China Tour Order of Merit leader Marty Dou Zecheng improved by 4 shots to finish day 2 at -1, while Hong Kong favourite Jason Hak dropped from finishing even par yesterday to +4 making it a big ask to get back up with the leaders.
Except for Jason Hak, the other four players from Hong Kong in the field missed the cut: James Stewart, Leon Philip D'Souza, Yin Ho Yue and Isaac Lam.
