From buggy driver for Thomas Bjorn at the Ryder Cup last month to the main man here, Denmark’s Thorbjorn Olesen – who shot a course record 62 for a midway total of 15-under-par 127, six strokes clear of his nearest pursuers – has moved into the fast lane: only halfway though this Turkish Airlines Open at Regnum Carya Resort, and he has almost moved out of sight.
Game over?
Not yet, not quite. On a course with a propensity to bite – as evidenced by Alex Levy taking a quintuple nine on the Par 4 fifth hole of his second round – and plenty of water to go with undulating greens, Olesen will, as he knows only too well, need to negotiate a safe path to what would be the biggest win of his career.
“I feel like I’ve been up in contention in a lot of big events. I feel pretty comfortable. There’s still 36 holes to go, a lot of golf to be played, but yeah I have to keep being aggressive, keep going after some of the pins and try to make birdies. That’s the only way I can win,” said the Dane.
Pádraig Harrington, a vice-captain to Darren Clarke at that match in Hazeltine, is convinced the experience of being brought into that team environment benefitted Olesen. “I’d say he probably learned quite a bit about his own game there. When you’re that close, and you’re watching other players, I am sure he could see he is every bit as good as everybody else and in some ways better and that could have helped him,” said Harrington.
“I think it’s a good learning experience for anybody to be around, in a situation like that, the best players in Europe playing in the Ryder Cup and you can see their strengths and weaknesses and you understand that you’ve (also) got strength and weaknesses and maybe not to be focusing on your weaknesses so much. Nobody is perfect out here.
“Thorbjorn has a golf game to compete with anybody on any stage in the world. The only thing that will hold him back is his own frustrations at a lack of perfection on any given shot and that gets in on him. When he goes and watches other players and understands that the best players, playing well, make plenty of mistakes, that will make it easier for him to make a mistake and not get down on himself. He’s got a great swing and strikes the ball great so with him, it really does all come down to attitude.”
Nobody is perfect for sure, but Olesen was darn close to it for much of a round that featured an eagle, eight birdies and a lone bogey. He was six-under for his finishing six holes, with the eagle coming on the Par 5 15th where he rolled a pure putt up and over the ridge. However, it was his approach shot to the 17th, where, after a loose 3-wood off the tee, he curled an approach shot around a floodlight pole to 20 feet and sank the putt with his trusty Nike putter.
Olesen – currently 92nd in the world rankings and whose biggest tour win came in last year’s Alfred Dunhill Links championship – reached the midpoint of the tournament, the first of three in the European Tour’s “Final Series” which culminates in the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai in a fortnight, with a six stroke lead over Spain’s Adrian Otaegui and Thailand’s Thongchai Jaidee.
For his part, Harrington enjoyed a more productive day’s work with a second round 69 for 141, one-under, that moved him up 17 places into tied-41st. The Dubliner endured two three-putts which led to bogeys and also finished with a dropped shot on the 10th, his finishing hole, after failing to get up and down from greenside rough.
“Maybe because I hadn’t had any chips all day that I just didn’t see the shot at all; from the edge of the green, you know what, if it was a difficult chip I probably would have got it up and down. It was too easy....I didn’t see it,” explained Harrington of that final hole lapse.
The high point was a run of four straight birdies from the first to the fourth hole, a run which ended when he missed a 10-footer for a fifth straight birdie on the fifth.
Although he suffered two three-putts in his round, Harrington – who is playing all three of the “Final Series” tournaments in his bid to move back inside the world’s top-50 – still has confidence with his mallet. “I’m putting well, I’m not being tentative,” he said.
