MASTERCARD CHAMPIONSHIP
BARON SEKIYA / WEST HAWAII TODAY
Allen Doyle's 66 yesterday left him at 15-under 129 after two rounds of the MasterCard Championship at Hualalai Golf Club on the Big Island and in the lead by a stroke.
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Funk closing on Doyle
KAUPULEHU-KONA, Hawaii » Fred Funk waited a day to give his fellow 50-somethings a little head start, but by the end of the second round of the $1.8 million MasterCard Championship, he was near the top.
His second-round 63 in windy conditions at the Hualalai golf course propelled him into the early clubhouse lead. By the time Funk was done, his closest competitors still had a half-dozen holes to play on the tough back nine, leaving him feeling pretty good about his chances today.
Funk's 36-hole total of 14-under 130 left him one shot in back of a slimmed-down Allen Doyle, whose second-round 66 led to a two-day total of 15-under 129. Doyle birdied the final two holes to give himself a one-shot lead over Funk and a two-shot advantage over Jim Thorpe (69) and Tom Purtzer (69) heading into the final round of the opening event on the Champions Tour.
Doyle, who lost 20 pounds last year while on a diet with his wife, was paired with Thorpe during an opening-round 63 and began the day only one shot in back of first-day leader Purtzer. But two bogeys on the front nine, including one on the par-5 seventh, dropped Doyle down the leaderboard as Funk sailed on by.
But like a boxer surviving early shots to the head, Doyle refused to go down. He shot a 4-under 32 on the back, including birdies on the final two holes to go from one shot down to one shot up. He will be paired with Funk today.
"It will be a blast (playing with Funk)," the 59-year-old Doyle said. "Freddie's a good man. He brings a lot to our tour. He's one of our standard-bearers. If you win any tournament out here -- great. Beating some guys doesn't bring the special effect of beating, for instance, Fred now, Tom Watson, the new guys on the block.
"Beating the names is a little bit extra. So it's nice to play with those guys. It's nice to see what you have to do and I'm sure Fred will show me what I have to do. If you can do it, then it's a little more of a feather in your cap and if you can't, you have to go back to the drawing board and try a little harder. But my family will still love me."
Unlike Doyle and the other 39 golfers in this winners-only field, Funk already has two weeks of competitive golf in his bag on the tougher PGA Tour. He managed a top-10 finish at last week's Sony Open in Hawaii, giving him the kind of confidence needed to play with the senior set today.
"It was obviously a great round, a dream start," Funk said. "Going 7 under on seven holes that's as good as it gets. I was just trying to stay focused, stay real calm, don't get ahead of myself, don't think of anything I was really shooting. Don't even care what anybody else is doing. And just got out there and do the best I can."
Funk began his round with four consecutive birdies en route to being 7 under after only seven holes. He bogeyed the par-4 ninth to shoot a blistering 30 on the front and came back to birdie the first two holes on the back nine. Standing on the 13th tee he even entertained the thought of shooting his first 59.
"I was thinking at 13 that if I make five out of the last six and I've got 59," Funk said. "I did think about it and a lot of people say you don't want to think about it. And I started thinking, yeah, I could do that."
But with only one birdie the rest of the way, Funk had to settle for a second-round-best 63. Doyle's 15-under total is the worst for a second-round leader here since 2004. Blame that on the wind that shifted from light Kona breezes on Friday to a brisk northeast wind yesterday that forced the field to shoot 2.5 shots more a round than the opening 18 holes.
"The 63 was great, but with that kind of start, it could have been a lot better," Funk said. "But I'm pleased overall -- it put me back in contention. It's not playing that easy out there and if it blows like it did again tomorrow, then I'll have to shoot another one of those (63s) again, but it's there."
And it's not as if it's just him and Doyle in a match-play setting. There are still 13 golfers within five shots of the lead, including Jay Haas, who fired a 5-under 67 yesterday to trail Doyle by three strokes at 132. Loren Roberts (65), Denis Watson (66) and D.A. Weibring (69) are only four shots off the pace at 11-under 133.