Perfect conditions greeted the third day early starters in the Tomson Pudong Shanghai Golf Club.
The blustery wind that blew hard through the afternoon yesterday had died away, and it looked like scores could go low. There were plenty of birdies to be had, and even those rarest of creatures – an eagle. Two in fact, one from Scotland's Simon Yates on the 2nd, and another from defending champion Rafael Jacquelin on the 13th.
But the course is still a difficult one, always ready to punish the slightest mistake, and the result is that there were plenty of bogeys as well, and worse.
Play was held up early in the day when the second group out, England's Richard Finch and Taipei's Hsu Mong-Nan found themselves in trouble on the 6th and 7th. First Hsu needed a ruling on the 6th. His drive finished just on the tree line, and when he tried to draw the ball round to the green he only succeeded in hammering it into the forest and up against the wall of the condominiums that line the hole.
Then Finch needed a ruling on the 7th. His drive found water, but he showed that a detailed knowledge of the rules is one of the most important clubs in the professional's bag. First he took advantage of a complex network of regulations surrounding red and yellow hazard markers to get a drop on the opposite side of the stream from where his ball had landed, then he was able to profit from two rolls onto a bridge to claim free relief and place his ball in the rough.
Unfortunately, the golf has to come into play at some point, and none of the above was able to save him from a double-bogey. Lengthy waits for officials in both cases served to create a long hold-up, and eventually Michael Campbell and partner Sam Little were invited to play through.
The benign conditions and a cut at –3 provided encouragement to the morning starters – the spread from leader to last place was only 8 strokes – but none of the players in the first ten pairings had been able to get into the red by noon.
(David Ferguson for China.org.cn April 26, 2008)
