Sam Hutsby takes halfway lead at the ALLIANZ Open de Lyon
Sam Hutsby cruised into the lead midway through the second round of the ALLIANZ Open de Lyon in Monthieux, France.
The Englishman is on 10-under, following his opening-round 69, with a blistering eight-under par 63, at Golf du Gouverneur.
Hutsby, who returned to the European Challenge Tour after performing badly on the tier-one European Tour, is happy to be back in contention this week. Last week, he missed the cut in Spain, despite recording an albatross in his second round.
Therefore, he was pleased to make a strong comeback in France, in a bid to record the first European Challenge Tour victory of his career.
Having started four strokes off the lead, he got off to a stunning start by carding a birdie on the 10th hole, his first. He then added another two birdies on the 12th and the 15th hole, prior to conceding the only bogey
of the day on the 18th.
The performance that really made the difference came on the front nine of the course. He birdied each of the first three holes and added another three to his scorecard on the fifth, seventh and the ninth hole.
At the end of two rounds, he was two strokes better than Frenchman Baptiste Chapellan, Steven Jeppesen of Sweden and Englishman Phillip Archer.
According to him, he did not play well in the opening round. However, he managed to control his game on day two and created a number of scoring opportunities, throughout the day.
“The greens are rolling really nice, they’re soft so if you get the yardage right you can get it close and then they roll really well,” he said. “It’s obviously a nice feeling to capitalise on the chances you give yourself”.
He added, “I played quite poorly yesterday and my driving wasn’t good. I played the par threes in three under but the par fives in two over so I thought if I could do well on the par fives today it would be a better day and I did a bit of work on the range
on my ball flight and it paid off”.
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