José Manuel Garrido
José Manuel Garrido carded a bogey on eighteenth, preventing the Colombian from grabbing the outright lead halfway through the Pacific Colombia Tour Championship presented by Helm today.
Garrido shot 67 in the second round and is now joined at the top by Canada’s Adam Hadwin, who shot 66 for the second straight day. The co-leaders of the US $130,000 event co-sanctioned by the Tour de las Americas and the Canadian Tour have an aggregate score of 12-under par 132.
Trailing the leading duo by two strokes, there’s a three-way tie featuring the USA’s Vince Covello, 65, Argentina’s Juan Pablo Abbate, 66, and Colombia’s Jesús Rivas, 67. All three of them played the Club Campestre Guaymaral Course No. 1 in the morning.
Another stroke further back Venezuela’s Diego Larrazabal, 66, and Alfredo Adrián, 66, are joined by Argentina’s Tomás Argonz, 67, César Monasterio, 67, and Maxi Godoy, 69, in a five-way tie for the sixth spot.
For the second consecutive day the weather played in the tournament’s favor. It was mostly overcast, with sporadic light rains throughout the day. With the golf course still wet, the low scores kept coming at a fast pace that raised the cut line to 3-under par 141. A total of 68 competitors advanced into the weekend after another round of lift, clean and replace.
“I stayed very patient and got rewarded right at the end,” said TLA member Garrido, who following a birdie at the first and an eagle at the tenth reached the fifteenth tee trailing the clubhouse leader Hadwin by two strokes. A hot string of three consecutive birdies between 15 and 17 moved the 32-year old Colombian ahead.
His one-stroke lead was surprisingly gone at the last, a 458-yard par-four guarded by a lake on the left where he ended up missing a five-footer for par. “That was my first bogey of the tournament. I did my best trying to avoid it, but it happened. Anyway, it turned out to be a good day for me,” added the winner of the TLA’s 2010 Sport Francés Open.
After missing the cut the last two weeks, Hadwin finally found his rhythm in Bogota. “It was just a good solid round. I hit the ball so well today that I felt I could have been three or four shots lower with the amount of putts for birdie I had,” commented the player from the Canadian Tour, where he won the Desert Dunes Classic and finished second in the Order of Merit last season.
Hadwin went bogey-free today, making birdies on 2, 6, 7 and 17, plus an eagle on 12. “There’s five par-fives on this course and you need to take advantage of them. It’s a shorter golf course and you always have irons into par-fives. I was able to make eagle on 12 today, but I had eagle putts on 4, 7, 12 and 17.”
Joining Garrido for the lead at the start of the day, Argentina’s Nelson Ledesma was unable to produce and posted an even-par 72 that slowed him down into a tie for the eighteen spot. Among those tied with him is Colombia’s Jesús Amaya, who followed yesterday’s 74 with an amazing 9-under par 63 this morning.
Amaya’s best-of-the-week featured seven birdies and one eagle that vaulted him from a tie for the 100th spot.
