John Senden overpowers Jason Day in all-Aussie showdown at WGC Accenture Match play Championship
John Senden pulled in a glorious round on the second day of the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship when he defeated countryman Jason Day to stay in contention for the coveted trophy.
The Brisbane native had little hope of overpowering the trailblazing Day in the knock-out format, but did well to capitalise on the shortfalls of his competitor to surge up the leaderborad.
He is now in the top-16 who will wrestle his way up for the semi final and subsequently the final round on Sunday.
Day had the worst day at the scenic Ritz-Carlton at Doral and kept struggling on the rugged desert layout to grab lead in the 18-hole stretch.
He fell for two unplayable lies, giving Senden the opportunity to bag the holes.
Senden said, "I had the pressure on him early. Then basically from there, I wanted to keep focused and keep the quality of shots going on and I did that".
He added, "He sort of made the mistakes to force the match to go further and further my way. Sure enough, some of Jason's drives today were offline a bit and I put a lot of pressure on him".
Senden managed to sink birdies on third and fourth holes on the front and stepped on the heat to pressurize Day from the start of the day.
Both players bogeyed the seventh but Day fell for another bogey on the eighth, allowing Senden to go 3-up.
While Day fell for another unplayable lie on the fifth, Senden went over to bag two more holes on the 17th and 18th, convincingly defeating Day by 6 & 5.
Senden admitted that it was more of taking advantage of Day’s bad form than to pull in a glorious round on his part. He shared some of his golfing philosophy and said,
“It's about standing up there and really just looking out there and just ripping it, letting it go and being a free player. It's all about the freedom”.
For the moment, Senden is the only Aussie who has survived the tough knock-out format and will proceed to the third round of the event on Friday.
Adam Scott was the first Aussie who had to step off the course after his defeat in the first round.
The 40-year-old Senden has been playing professional golf since the year 1992. He has five professional victories to his credit with just one coming on the PGA Tour when he landed the John Deere Classic at the scenic TPC Deere Run in 2006.
His highest finish in a major event came in the year 2007, when he finished joint fourth behind the winner Tiger Woods in the PGA Championship.
Ranked 41st on the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR), Senden is known for his weak putter but still played solid round, landing 77 percent of the greens and 80 percent of the fairways in regulation.
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