Branden Grace sits three under at the halfway mark after a battling 71 in his title defence at the Nedbank Golf Challenge at Sun City.
Sitting six back, the South African maintains that he should by no means be written off just yet.
His point was driven home after his round with the closing stretch from the 15th eating into Sergio Garcia’s lead while also severely denting the aspirations of Matt Wallace and Haotong Li. That trio limped into the clubhouse with a combined score of +9 for those four holes.
‘I played actually pretty well. I hit the ball pretty good tee-to-green,’ said Grace.
He opened up on a few costly mistakes just when his round was starting to take shape.
‘A couple of bad calls and a couple of bad winds from Zach and things like that and that’s costly around a place like this. But I also missed three putts inside three or four feet and that’s pretty costly around here. That can turn a great round into an average round like it did at the end of the day.’
He has set his sights on a low number in round three as he attempts to get closer to the leaders come Sunday’s finale.
‘Hopefully get off to a good start tomorrow and hopefully have a nice low one, and then get myself back in the tournament.’
Second round leaderboard:
135 – Sergio Garcia 64 71
136 – Louis Oosthuizen 69 67
138 – Mikko Korhonen 68 70
140 – Dylan Frittelli 73 67, Aaron Rai 72 68, Shane Lowry 71 69, Lee Westwood 71 69
141 – Darren Fichardt 74 67, Haotong Li 71 70, Andrea Pavan 71 70, Thomas Detry 75 66, Branden Grace 70 71, Matt Wallace 69 72, Mike Lorenzo-Vera 68 73
142 – Andrew Johnston 73 69, Julien Guerrier 74 68, Matthew Fitzpatrick 71 71, Ashun Wu 69 73
143 – Renato Paratore 72 71, Rory McIlroy 72 71, Matthias Schwab 72 71, Dean Burmester 72 71, Ross Fisher 71 72, Ryan Fox 70 73, Andy Sullivan 69 74
144 – Pablo Larrazabal 74 70, Nicolas Colsaerts 75 69, Benjamin Hebert 69 75
145 – Brandon Stone 74 71, Sam Horsfield 73 72, Lucas Bjerregaard 75 70, Gavin Green 75 70, Oliver Fisher 75 70, Lucas Herbert 76 69, Jason Scrivener 69 76, Martin Kaymer 76 69
146 – Padraig Harrington 73 73, Adrian Otaegui 74 72, Maximilian Kieffer 75 71, Joakim Lagergren 72 74, Tom Lewis 75 71, Richard Sterne 77 69, Erik van Rooyen 77 69, Charl Schwartzel 68 78
147 – Trevor Immelman 74 73, Wade Ormsby 73 74, Nacho Elvira 74 73, Lee Slattery 74 73, Chris Paisley 72 75, Joost Luiten 72 75, Tapio Pulkkanen 71 76
148 – Paul Waring 72 76, Marcus Kinhult 74 74, Richard Mcevoy 72 76, Robert Rock 75 73, Jordan Smith 79 69
149 – Shubhankar Sharma 74 75, Kiradech Aphibarnrat 75 74, Jorge Campillo 71 78, Thomas Bjorn 76 73, Paul Dunne 78 71, Danny Willett 78 71
150 – Alexander Bjork 75 75, Jens Dantorp 77 73
151 – Matthieu Pavon 78 73, Ashley Chesters 78 73, Alexander Levy 81 70
152 – George Coetzee 73 79, Stephen Gallacher 77 75
153 – Hideto Tanihara 74 79, Thomas Aiken 76 77, Matthew Southgate 80 73
Photo: Getty Images
