- Don’t Stop The Carnival: Round two of the European Tour’s Russian Open my not have represented Friday’s most important golf action but it did allow much of the silliness of round one to play out to its logical conclusion.  Specifically, NHL star (and amateur invite) Alexei Kovalev, who was clearly far out of his golfing depth, actually improved his score by a stout 14 strokes from Thursday, his rock-solid 85 still being high enough to clinch last-place honors by 15 strokes.  His partner in crime, former world number one tennis player Evgeni Kafelnikov, also improved his score substantially, from 89 to 80, allowing him to tie for next-to-last with an unknown Russian professional named Victor Ostankov.  Of course, their presence in a fledgling event played in a decidedly non-golfing country might well have been necessary in order to generate even a modest local buzz; it was, to be sure, considerably more important than Michelle Wie’s invitation to next week’s Reno-Tahoe Open.  Meanwhile, John Daly made great strides in his quest to miss cuts against the weakest fields, in the farthest outposts, worldwide, his 143 halfway total coming up just one shy of doing battle with a weekend crop that includes only four players ranked better than 200th in the world.  To add to the craziness, that one-time Dean of E Tour crazies, Sweden’s Jarmo Sandelin is actually tied for the halfway lead (with countryman Mikael Lundberg) at 13-under-par 131.  The fact that Sandelin hasn’t logged a top 10 since a T7 at last November’s Hong Kong Open might suggest his chances of winning are small.  The fact that not one of the field’s top 13 contenders is ranked among the top 250 worldwide, on the other hand, might nullify that point completely.  And for the trivially inclined: the home country managed to place nine entries in the field, all of whom missed the cut.  The top Russian performance was delivered by amateur Andrey Pavlov, whose 145 total was really quite respectable, at least when compared to the circus-like performances of Kovalev an Kafelnikov.  Climate notwithstanding, golf may yet take root in Russia, and the Russian Open may someday represent a significant stop on the European (or OneAsia?) circuit – but definitely not yet.