The French are good at inventing complex solutions to simple problems. Invariably the solutions don't work, so they require ever more complex solutions that don't work either.
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Charl Schwartzel - Eight under or nine-under... less than reliable scoreboards. [China.org.cn] |
Everywhere else in golf there is a ‘board carrier' who rather obviously carries a board. He or she follows a group of golfers around the course from start to finish, and the board contains the names of the golfers in the group and their current scores, which are updated after each hole. This means that whenever you encounter a group, wherever they are on the course, you can look at the board and know exactly what each player's current score is.
At the Open de France the French have decided to replace the board carrier with a fixed scoreboard on each green, on which the current scores of the players currently playing the hole are available. They also have a full leaderboard which displays the names and the scores of the top five players in the overall competition.
The first advantage of this is that it creates a huge amount of work, since all the names and all the scores have to be changed with every group that plays the hole, plus any changes in the overall lead.
The second advantage is that you only know a group's scores if you are actually at the side of the green. If you meet them somewhere else on the course you cannot see what their scores are.
The third advantage is that it creates a communications nightmare where things will almost certainly go wrong faster than they can be put right.
It has come to my attention over the first two days of the Open de France that the scoreboards are wrong all the time, sometimes laughably so. As the end of the first day approached, the overall leaderboard at the side of the 18th green had five names and five scores. Three of them were wrong.
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Echinique - optimistic about his weekend prospects. [China.org.cn] |
As the second round approached its climax, Rafa Echinique of Argentina went to ten-under and snatched the lead from Martin Kaymer. On the overall leaderboard on the 14th green his name did not even appear, although Lee Westwood, at six-under, was one of the names that did. Since Rafa had been at nine-under only a hole or two previously, it was reasonable to assume that some kind of disaster had overtaken him. That does happen on this course.
But when you ask the worthy lady in charge of the scoreboard to confirm, and discover that she doesn't know how to update the electronic device that keeps her informed of the scores, you are entitled to think that maybe something has gone wrong with the system.
No disaster had overtaken Echinique. He played exceptional golf throughout his round, and finished on ten-under with a two-stroke lead over the field. He fought back from the bogeys he made on the first and last, and one on the 12th in between – something no other player was able to do on the day – and his eagle and five birdies rewarded him with a score of 67.
His iron-play and his ball-striking were immaculate, and so was his course strategy. He used his driver only twice, and played 2 and 3-irons off the tee on some very long holes, including the par fives. The resulting consistency in finding fairways and greens paid dividends – he faced very few long putts.
The Argentinian has two second-place finishes although he has yet to win on the European Tour, but he has won the Argentine Open, and play of the quality he has shown over the past two days ought to see him lift a trophy in due course.
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Rafa Echinique birdies 17 to go to 11-under, but drops the stroke on the last. [China.org.cn] |
Overnight leader Martin Kaymer must have licked his lips when he woke for the second day of the tournament. The conditions looked very much like working in his favour.
Friday produced a sharp contrast to Thursday's conditions – cooler with plenty of cloud in the sky, and most importantly, a gusty breeze. These are conditions in which it will be extremely difficult to shoot low on the testing Golf National course, and so indeed it proved.
Several of the Friday morning starters mounted challenges, but each of them went on to drop strokes over the closing holes and finish behind Kaymer's first-day mark of nine-under. Sweden's Peter Hanson started best-placed at six-under, and by the turn had worked his way to ten-under and the outright lead. But he immediately doubled the 10th, and another bogey on 18 saw him drop back to seven-under and a share of fifth.
England's Steve Webster played flawless golf for seventeen holes that took him to seven-under for the day and a share of the lead. But he too dropped one at the last to finish on eight-under in second place. He was quickly joined in the clubhouse by South Africa's Charl Shwartzel, who also dropped a stroke on the par-3 8th to lose his share of the lead.
Italian Francesco Molinari looked like he might join them or even go one better when he reached the birdiable par-5 9th on eight-under. But a disastrous triple-bogey that included a missed putt of less than two feet put paid to his prospects, at least for the time being.
Martin Kaymer started the afternoon with five straight pars, and a birdie on 6 gave him a two-stroke lead. But he dropped two strokes on his back nine to finish tied on second at eight-under. With the exception of Echenique, none of the other overnight leaders could make any headway at all – Scott Strange, John Bickerton and Paul Waring all going backwards.
The Golf national is a cruel course where a single hole can ruin a round or a championship. It happened yesterday to Mark Brown with an eight on the par-3 2nd. Sweden's Michael Lundberg went one worse on Friday with a nine at the same hole. And Scotland's Scott Drummond missed the cut by six strokes, precisely the number he dropped on the 18th hole, where he went into double figures with a 10.
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Peter Hanson - briefly in the lead at the turn. [China.org.cn] |
That cut slipped late in the day to one-over, and spared the blushes of some illustrious names, Colin Montgomerie being one of them. But four Major-winners will not be there for the weekend. Play on the course takes place to a backdrop of noise from light aircraft taking off and landing at the nearby St Quentin airport. Yesterday these were joined by a number of rather more expensive private jets, some of which might have belonged to US Open winner Michael Campbell, and multiple Major-winners Jose Maria Olazabal and Angelo Cabrera.
Current Open title-holder Padraig Harrington is also on his way home, a very worried man. He has now missed five cuts in a row, and his hold on the Claret Jug of the Open Champion seems to be hanging by a very slender thread.
Leader:
132 - Rafa Echinique (Argentina)
134 – Martin Kaymer (Ger); Steve Webster (Eng); Charl Schwartzel (SA)
135 – Peter Hanson (Swe); Richard Green (Aus)
(China.org.cn July 4, 2009)
