A sad day for Lindell on the greens of Abu Dhabi – "Fortunately, there are two days to improve"
Abu Dhabi saw a painful day on the greens for the Finns, as Oliver Lindell played a 72 (par) to follow up on his good opening day. His overall score of -5 puts him in 42nd place in this birdie-friendly competition. Lindell felt that he hit the ball better than yesterday, but his putts just wouldn't drop.
"My swing was better than yesterday, and I played good golf on the front nine. I got off to a good start today and my second shots felt good, but the distances weren't quite right. The putts didn't go in at all – to be honest, a lot of them were bad putts, many of which went wide, but there were also some good ones that didn't go in. We were too far from the flags," Lindell summed up.
On the Yas Links course, with its sometimes undulating greens, a missed approach shot means ending up on the wrong level on the green, which naturally makes things more difficult. Added to this, easy missed mid-range and short putts and a 0% success rate in saving up & down situations dampened the mood.
The Porvoo native still managed to score three commendable birdies on the front nine, but there were no successes on the back nine.
"After the last birdie (hole 7), there was something bad on every hole. I felt like I just wanted to get off the course because of the heat, as nothing was working on the back nine. On the 11th hole, I missed an easy birdie from a couple of metres. That was followed by a bogey, which could have been easily avoided, and after that, the rest of the round was just a struggle without any success."
The conditions changed from yesterday, as the morning was not as calm as on Thursday, and the wind direction changed completely.
"The wind was coming from a completely different direction today than yesterday and felt strong at times, but in the end it didn't affect my shots and I even overplayed its effect. Fortunately, there are still two rounds left to improve significantly. Now I have to start practising my putting, because with that game I could even be in the lead if it worked," Lindell said.
The rock-solid English duo of Tommy Fleetwood and Aaron Rai took the lead in the competition with a score of -14.