So far, so good for Séamus Power. As the only player from the world’s top 50 in the field in the Bermuda Championship, and with whatever added weight that entails, the Waterford player backed up his opening 65 with another 65 in the PGA Tour event at Port Royal Golf Club to work his way in the business end of affairs heading into the weekend.
Indeed, his only stumble of an otherwise well-crafted round came on his first hole, the 10th. “The conditions kind of caught me out rather than any kind of poor swing,” explained Power, who thereafter hardly put a foot wrong in adding seven birdies to his scorecard to reach the halfway stage on 12-under-par 130, two strokes behind clubhouse leader Ben Crane.
Power, ranked 48th in the world and intent on racking up early FedEx Cup points in the wraparound 2022/23 season, rebounded from that opening bogey with a birdie on the 11th and then added further gains at the 16th, 18th, second, sixth and seventh in testing conditions as he finished his round in wind and rain.
A little unhappy with how he played in the first round, despite signing for a 65, Power had headed to the range on Thursday evening to work on some “loose” tee shots which he felt needed fixing.
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“There’s a couple of tee shots that have always been a little awkward for me here. My miss is kind of the wrong miss for those holes (the stretch from 13 to 15), so kind of figure out what I was going to do on those holes gave me a little more clarity when I was going through that stretch today,” explained Power, who was happy to get into the clubhouse as the weather deteriorated and to be right in the mix going into the weekend in his quest for a second career title stateside having made his breakthrough in last year’s Barbasol Championship.
And for the second straight day Power birdied the signature clifftop par 3 16th hole. “I know it wasn’t playing as hard today, it was an 8-iron, but still, it’s an intimidating hole and you kind of feel like you’re picking up some ground there making some twos,” he said.
Crane, whose last of five PGA Tour wins came in the 2014 St Jude Classic, shot a superb 62 for 128 — which included an eagle, nine birdies and two bogeys — to charge through the field.
In the Portugal Masters on the DP World Tour, there was only disappointment for the two Irish players competing as Jonny Caldwell (72 for 141) and Cormac Sharvin (73 for 146) both missed the cut which fell on 138. Both have failed to retain their tour cards for next season and must now revert to next month’s Q-School if they are to regain them.
Malaysia’s Gavin Green and England’s Jordan Smith, currently 10th on the Race to Dubai order of merit, shared the 36-hole lead on 13-under-par 129 in the tournament in Vilamoura.
