Struggling Rafferty drops a clanger

Former European number one Ronan Rafferty's season hit a new low yesterday when he was disqualified from the Scottish PGA Championship. Rafferty, 37, a seven-time title-holder, the 1989 European money-list winner and 20 years on tour, has not made a cut this year, missing out in all the 15 events he had played up to Gleneagles.

Then the 1989 Ryder Cup player, who missed the whole of the 1999 season and much of the two years around it because of a thumb injury, looked to have at last turned a corner when he picked up four birdies on the front nine to challenge for the lead.

However, after running up three bogeys, Rafferty nosedived to what he thought was a double-bogey seven on the long 16th after he tangled with a bunker, hitting his ball into an unplayable lie in the face of it.

Rafferty took a penalty drop, and when his ball rolled down the face into the bottom of the bunker for a second time, he played the ball from where it came to rest.

Worse was to come, though, when after signing for a 73, one over par, with a back nine of 41 which included his double at the 16th, he was told he had dropped incorrectly and should have added a further two penalty strokes.

Because he had signed for a seven at 16, and not a nine, Rafferty was disqualified. "I couldn't drop the ball or place it anywhere," said Rafferty. "What I should have done is take the nearest point of relief. It doesn't have to be close to where the ball was. I could have taken it eight or 10 feet away and placed it somewhere on the bank of the bunker.

"But after a second drop when it went back into the bunker, I played it and shouldn't have. So I signed for the wrong score on the hole," he said.

Rafferty, with 16 missed cuts, is approaching the record for successive missed cuts on the European Tour of 21 by Justin Rose - currently only a stroke off the lead.

There was better news for another Irish man, Gary Murphy. His four-under-par 68 left him two shots behind leader Jonathan Lomas. He was joined on 68 by Ryder Cup captain Sam Torrance who, one day short of his 48th birthday, outscored the main contenders for a place in his European team.

On a day when play was delayed by three and a half hours due to fog on the PGA Centenary course, Lomas held the early lead on six under, helped considerably by an albatross on the 12th hole, with Rose, Warren Bennett and Scotsman Stephen Gallacher lying a shot behind. Wales' Mark Mouland was also six under par with five holes left when play was suspended for the day as darkness fell. Only four of the afternoon matches were able to finish.