 It was a day for small victories. You knew that for sure when the leader said, “I’ve been playing so bad, I’m excited to be nervous.”
Johnson Wagner made himself at home at the Shell Houston Open, slapping an early 69 on the board to descend to 12-under-par and lounging around the rest of the day as the field fired and fell back. Not even an afternoon storm that held up play for an hour and 45 minutes could soften up the Redstone Golf Club Tournament Course enough for anyone to catch Wagner.
Mathew Goggin and Charley Hoffman came closest in the incomplete second round, pulling to within three shots. Goggin shot 64 and Hoffman, who had opened in 65, recorded a 70. Defending champion Adam Scott, who had shared the first-round lead with Wagner, gave up three strokes to par over his first 11 holes, rallied briefly on the back side, but finished bogey-double bogey for 76. He was seven shots off the lead.
Wagner had good reason to celebrate his nervousness. The 28-year-old Nationwide Tour graduate achieved his first top-10 finish at this event a year ago, scaling the heights and plummeting into the depths more often than the leading man in an opera. He opened in 66, soared to 75, blistered the course in a record 64 and then hobbled to a closing 73. Even the spectators needed a shrink.
But he got a T9, $137,500 and a healthy dose of self-respect for all his mood swings. It was apparent that he couldn’t wait to say hello again as he opened in 63 to share the new course record with Adam Scott. Going low isn’t the big challenge for the 6-3, 230-pound native of Amarillo, Texas; however, backing up a sparkling round with a respectable one is his test.
He met it admirably on Friday, opening with a 10-foot birdie putt after wedging out of a fairway bunker. He found adventure at the third, where he hooked his 3-wood into the drink and made bogey. And then? Despair? Angst? Cramps? No! He steadied himself like a Tiger with birdies on the next two holes and added another before the turn. “After I birdied 4 and 5 to get it back to 2-under, I thought I might shoot 10-under today,” he said. Well, no, but he did nothing silly. On the back nine, he canceled his bogey on 11 with a birdie on 13 and cruised home in 3-under 69.
And then he pronounced it “a very good day,” adding, “I was pleased to go out and shoot a good sub-70 round.”
Of course, this is Houston, so even with the defending champ off his feed for a round, there had to be an Aussie angle. Goggin provided it, posting two eagles in his first eight holes to festoon his 64. On the par-four fifth, he holed his 8-iron approach. “That’s what kick-started the round,” he said.
He also unlocked the mystery of why Australians have had so much success in Houston. Six of them have won this event a total of eight times, including the last two and four of the last nine.
“I don’t know why we play well here,” he said. “It’s not like it’s a classic Australian golf course. It’s not like it’s set up like anything we play at home. It’s wide open . . . maybe we’re just all better on courses you don’t have to think your way around. You just smash it and go find it. When you dumb it down for us, we do all right.”
A 64 can make anybody look pretty smart. Chad Campbell matched it and hit the halfway mark alone in fourth place, five off the lead. Otherwise, brilliance was in short supply. Ben Crane supplied a 65 following an opening 74 but the field did not scorch Redstone as in the first round, when 54 men beat par and 25 shot in the 60s.
Because of the weather delay, 36 players did not complete the second round by dark. Wagner had finished long before, though, in plenty of time to contemplate another night of something very new, sleeping on the lead. Or trying to.
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