- An Uphill Battle:  Many years ago, I met a New England golf pro who’d spent the better part of one season playing the PGA Tour.  Being rather less knowledgeable about such things in those days, I asked what made him give up the competitive life for a club job, and he obligingly explained.  It seems that in some long-forgotten mini-tour event, he’d played the two best competitive rounds of his life – something like 66-65 – and led five players by a single shot.  Right then, he stated emphatically, he knew that his future did not lie on the PGA Tour.  I relate this story because it came immediately to mind last night when I checked the leaderboard at the LPGA’s Safeway International and found that Angela Stanford had followed her stunning Thursday 62 with a 69, for an impressive 131 halfway total.  Now Stanford, who won the 2003 ShopRite Classic (and obviously brings her best golf when supermarkets are involved) has certainly enjoyed a vastly better playing career than my old New England friend, but I wonder: how must it feel to shoot a career round, stand 13 under par through 36 holes...and only lead Lorena Ochoa by a single shot?

- Quotable:  “If a lad of 21 finishes second in his very first outing, he can play like a twit for the rest of his life and when he's 60 he'll have a pension fund worth $28 million” – Sandy Lyle on the advantages of playing in America.

- Reversal of Fortune:  A careful re-read shows that with the exception of Lee Westwood, I did not predict great things for Thursday’s “interesting” leaderboard at the E Tour’s Open de Andalucia, I merely noted its eclectic mix of players.  I offer this defense because glancing at the Friday night board, I notice that virtually every one of those “interesting” players crashed and burned today – well, all except Oz’s Matthew Millar (who I still haven’t heard of) who shot 69 and is tied for the lead.  Not one of the other eight even broke 70, least of all Westwood, whose 73 dropped him to a tie for 6th.  Amateur Danny Willett stumbled to a 75 (though we might be inclined to forgive him as it’s his first time competing at this level) while 18-year-old Rory McIlroy added a 73.  I think I’ll refrain from making any predictions for the weekend as well...

- A Not-So-Brave New World:  For the countless fans who have been searching vainly for results from the Chainama/Chinama Hills Zambia Open, I must break the bad news that the technology necessary to produce a live scoring feed apparently hasn’t reached Zambia just yet.  This also means that the Sunshine Tour website is unable to produce their usual hole-by-hole results and statistics package, something I can live without for at least this week because our friend PowerHouse McIntire – whose trademark mix of birdies, eagles, triples and quads generally produce a hugely colorful line score – is not in the field.  Besides, a week without viewing it all with the click of a mouse serves as a nice reminder to those not-so-long ago days when daily results for the Zambia Open would be impossible to find in America, and might appear in the Times of London under a cryptic, microscopic listing like: “AFRICA – Etsebeth 65, Charamba, Cairns, Hugo, Odah 66.”

- And...:  Not to beat a dead horse, but this Chainama/Chinama thing is really becoming quite amusing.  As I write this, with one round complete, the Sunshine Tour website’s daily scoreboard has a masthead shouting out “Chinama Hills 2008 Zambia Open” and, immediately beneath it, a subheading reading “Chinama Hills GC.”  And lest one think that there might be some convoluted logic to this that I’m missing, check out the site’s front page, where it appears both ways in various sections, within inches of one another.  I’m happy, though; I went with "Chainama" in the Week Ahead preview, which seems to be winning the competition roughly two to one.

Friday's Round of the Day

Johan Etsebeth's opening 65 in Zambia.  I don't know anything about it (see above) but I figure it deserves some sort of mention outside the confines of Zambia.