Little-known South African Rory Sabbatini, who did not even have a place in the BellSouth Classic in Atlanta on Monday morning, takes a three-stroke lead into today's third round. Sabbatini, originally the fourth reserve for the tournament, celebrated his 23rd birthday in spectacular style yesterday by adding a 66 to his opening 65 on the Sugarloaf course.
Playing only his seventh event on the US Tour after coming through the qualifying school at the end of last season, the Durban-born player stands on the 13-under-par mark of 131 at halfway and even managed to put world number one David Duval into the shade.
Duval, chasing a fourth win of the year going into next week's Masters, is still favourite to achieve that, but bogeyed his final hole to fall back into a share of third place on nine under, one behind Mike Weir and five adrift of Sabbatini, for whom victory would bring a place in the Masters field.
Duval did not feel as bad about his position as Jesper Parnevik. The Swede was 10-under with one to go, but had four chips from a bank beside the ninth green and ran up a quadruple bogey eight.
It sent him crashing to six under, one in front of Ian Woosnam, cheered by his 69 after a poor run, and two ahead of Colin Montgomerie, whose inward 31 left him away from the threat of missing the halfway cut.
Nick Faldo made it through with only one to spare, however, after managing to follow up his 69 with only a 73.
Woosnam, who has not tasted tournament success since he went to South Korea in June 1997 and beat Sandy Lyle in a play-off, missed the cut in last week's Players' Championship, but said: "This is much more my type of course and my confidence is coming back.
