Mikko Ilonen starts well at the BMW PGA Championship – Golf News
Mikko Ilonen carded a five-under par 67, in the suspended opening round of BMW PGA Championship, to share the second spot on the leaderboard, on Thursday, May 23, 2013.
Due to a 90-minute delay in the start of the opening round, the tournament officials had to suspend the game at 8:30 pm, which forced five groups to return to the clubhouse without completing their rounds.
Ilonen, who recorded two runner-up finishes in his last three starts on the European Tour, is now confident to go one better, in a bid to secure the third European Tour victory of his career.
Talking to the reporters, he said the he has been playing really well in the past few weeks and is really confident to finish his six-year winning drought on the tour.
The opening round witnessed him moving in the right direction, while surviving everything the British summer could throw at him, especially а small spell of hail.
"It was pretty nippy when we started and stayed that way," said Ilonen, who finished runner-up in Morocco and China recently. "All day I was thinking 'Can I get these waterproof trousers off?' and never managed it. We even had hail on the ninth tee. I said to a friend last night it was going to snow today and she laughed at me. It's British summer and we have proof of that."
Starting on the front nine, he parred each of the first three holes, followed by a birdie on the fourth hole. He then added another two shots to his scorecard on the sixth and the ninth hole, to reach the turn in three under.
The back nine of the course also witnessed him starting with pars, before he recorded back-to-back birdies on the 14th and the 15th hole. His only blemish of the day came on the 16th hole, but he atoned for the bogey with a birdie on the 18th hole, to finish just one stroke behind the clubhouse leader James Kingston.
Scott Henry, who secured his European Tour card last year through the Challenge Tour, carded a four-under par score to finish two strokes behind Kingston, and shared the third position.
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