bwin Sportsblog - Golf - The wind did blow

The wind certainly did blow at St Andrews yesterday and the overnight leader of Rory Mcllroy failed to handle it. He carded an eight over par 80 to drop like a stone to 34th place. To be fair though, he certainly hit the worst of the weather and many players were affected. In fact things got so bad that play was halted and that is one of the rare times when extreme wind has halted play in a major. Some players complained but the course was simply becoming unplayable. What all this means of course is that South African Louis Oosthuizen is now on -12 with a five shot lead. But luck can win you a major and of that there is no doubt. However the rest of the field is really bunched up so if the leader has a slump in form then the pack will be waiting. TigerWoods is decently placed at -4 as is England's Paul Casey at -6. The leader after Oosthuizen is American Mark Calcavecchia on -7 so this underlines that any player on under par is still in with a chance and would only be six shots back at most. I may be wrong and I have been wrong before about Open winners, namely Ben Curtis and Todd Hamilton and you can never rely on players to crack under pressure. Sometimes a series of events combine to ease a players path to victory. Although I do expect Oosthuizen to fall away, either that or for someone to catch him. Yesterday would have come totally unexpected to him and he would never have dreamed going into yesterday that he would be sitting here with a five shot lead. My prediction for today is that Oosthuizen will at least have a greatly diminished lead by the end of play and that makes him a lay in my book.