England’s Justin Rose boosted hopes of a rare back-to-back PGA and European Tour successes after moving into the clubhouse lead on day two of the Scottish Open at Royal Aberdeen.
The current World No. 6 and highest-ranked player in the field posted a three under par 68 to move to five under par in the £STG 3m event.
It moved Rose to within two shots of first round leader Rory McIlroy who is competing in the afternoon half of the draw.
Rose arrived in north-east Scotland having captured a fortnight earlier the PGA Tour’s Quicken Loans National at Congressional in Maryland.
The win was Rose’s 14th worldwide but also a first this season since capturing last year’s U.S. Open Championship.
Now the 33-year old Orlando-based Englishman not only looks for a seventh European Tour win but Rose has the opportunity of a rare double in winning on the PGA Tour and then winning in the next event on the European Tour.
It is an achievement Tiger Woods, and Rose’s management stablemate, attained in both 2006 and 2008 when he won the Buick Invitational in each of those years and then competed next on the European Tour to win his two Dubai Desert Classic titles.
“I haven’t played since I won at Congressional and then I didn’t do much practice last week for whatever reason and came here and played absolutely horrendous on Wednesday,” said Rose.
“For the last couple of days I have just been trying to find my feel but I got back into gear today and started to see good shots.
“So it was fun out there today and it’s great thing about links golf as the wind was coming from a different direction today and if you had to choose one type of course to play for the rest of your life you would choose a links course as it can play different every day.
“All the holes were different with different bunkers coming into play compared to yesterday.
“It’s also why I have decided to play here in Scotland this week because with a scorecard in my pocket I find I am becoming sharper by the day and that all goes for the next two rounds here at Royal Aberdeen and then heading into next week’s Open Championship.”
And while Rose put himself in contention Nick Faldo, and Britain’s most successful golfer, was delighted with his efforts despite dropping from four under par through six holes to bogey five of his closing 10 holes to miss the cut in a score of 73 for a four-over par tally.
It is only Faldo’s third full Tour event this year as the six-time Major winner now heads to Royal Liverpool where he will turn 57 on day two in his 36th straight (British) Open Championship.
“I played nicely on the easy holes, downwind, then I made a couple of bad swings and it just scared me and I didn’t know what to do for a while,” said Faldo.
“I got away with murder on six where I pulled it in the rough, whacked it out with a six iron and got a good kick off the hill and holed a 40-footer for an eagle. After that I kept pulling them left and I didn’t know what to do. I was done.
“I was going nicely, inside the cut line, but then I made a mess of it. Simple as that.
At least I felt like I found a few things coming in.
“This course compared to Hoylake is great training for hay and wind. If you can avoid, that’s the secret. The hay is scary stuff.
“But then I came here really out of t sure where they are going to go. I’m here on curiosity, that’s my bottom line.
“I already have a really good day job so I was just curious to see if I can play this game.”
