Paul McGinley, statistically, leads after two rounds of the Dunhill Links Championship, with a 13-under-par total of 131. He is two ahead of Brian Davis and Tony Johnstone, three in front of Jamie Donaldson and Padraig Harrington, and that, normally, would be quite straightforward.
This event, though, is anything but normal, and a case could be made out for saying that the "real leader" is in fact four shots behind McGinley, in the formidable shape of Ernie Els.
The South African is the only player in the top 10 who has had to play the two hardest courses of the three being used for this event, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie, the other being St Andrews.
He had a wonderful 65, seven under, at Carnoustie in the worst of Thursday's abominable weather, and followed it yesterday with a stop-start 70 at Kingsbarns, as the fog continually disrupted play.
Harrington, who is teamed with businessman Dermot Desmond, shares the lead at 21-under par with Australian Lucas Parsons and London property developer Jeremy Lambourne for the team prize.
McGinley recorded the lowest ever competition score on the famed St Andrews links, with an eight-under-par 64 that included back-to-back eagles, one of which, at the fourth, was a holed-out second shot. Professional golfers can usually gauge from the applause how close they have hit the ball, and such was the paucity of spectator support yesterday that McGinley thought he had been given "a 15-footer clap". It was not until David Howell, playing ahead of him, told him that the ball was in the hole that he realised he had his eagle.
There has been quite a hullaballoo over handicaps this week, with some 39 competitors here having had adjustments made.McGinley's partner, Kyle MacLachlan, a star of the TV series Sex in the City, a 14-handicapper at the start of the week, was abruptly reduced to nine after admitting he was "between clubs" and 14 was his last-known mark.
If the weather for the first day of this event was foul, yesterday's was merely miserable and that has probably been a contributory factor to the crowd count which has not got much beyond the fingers and toes stage. A further distraction to the richest tournament to be played in Britain has been the presence of the amateurs, the vast majority of whom will have proper handicaps, but are still no incentive to the spectator to part with £15 sterling. And a tiny percentage, of course, will have handicaps that don't bear close scrutiny.
One of the most notorious cases of handicap "massaging" in recent years was the Japanese amateur Masashi Yamada, who won the AT&T pro-am in 1995. Playing off 15 he produced team scores of 63, 65, 64 in the first three rounds, bettering his pro by 33 shots, and then a final round of 59. He had a handicap certificate saying he was off 15, but investigation revealed his true handicap was six.
