Palmer, Garcia tied for lead at Nelson
IRVING, Texas – Ryan Palmer never had much success at the Byron Nelson Championship, but his personal history has taken a dramatic turn in the last two days at TPC Four Seasons Resort. Palmer came in with a completely new strategy, one in which he lets his caddy, James Edmondson, tell him what to do. So far, so good.Palmer finished the first 36 holes at 8 under 132; good enough to share the midway lead with Spain’s Sergio Garcia, a winner here in 2004.
Palmer was so disgusted with his past performance in this event, he decided to let his caddy tell him what to hit, hot to stand and where to hit it. He has only questioned the calls of Edmondson a few times, but he has yet to question the results.
“It was just as calm, especially with the conditions,” Palmer said when speaking about the unique arrangement on day two. “When I got off that front-nine start I was thinking, ‘I'm going to shoot 12, 13-under par.’ I was working my tail off to get to there. That was my -- I started thinking a little ahead, but it kept me calm. When we were able to -- the winds were blowin', and we were able to get a lot of flight shots, and I just kept lettin’ him kind of lead the way.
“I keep surprising myself how calm I am when it's that way,” Palmer added. “You wonder why you don't do it every week, but there are a lot of times, it's something you want to do, but this is a golf course that I've struggled on so it's nice to not to think about it, just get up and hit the shot, and if I don't hit the shots it's on me, so it's nice to be free-swingin' like that.”
A perfect example of Palmer’s past struggles is the battles he has had at No. 4. The par-4 has water left and a bunker right and he was always confused where to hit his tee ball. With Edmondson doing the directing, Palmer has piped it both days.
Another example was the 18th, where he thought he was going to hit driver. To his surprise, Edmondson pulled five-wood. Five-wood? Then he offered a bit of an explanation.
"Let's practice for the British Open,” said Edmondson. “Hit the 5-wood hard as you can hit it."
Palmer said, “I did that and hit a perfect 5-iron to the middle of the green. He's playing steady golf, too. It's workin'. It's actually a great play for me because the way that hole is set up, you miss it right on 18 and you're having to punch out, and Brian Gay today had to punch it out of the water. I think we're taking trouble out of play.”
Garcia did hit it right on 18, but, his good play was evident as he blasted his approach into a greenside bunker and got up-and-down to save par for a second straight round of 66.
Conditions on Friday were significantly different than what they had been a day earlier. A south breeze that gusted to 36 miles-per-hour helped dry out the golf course and made greens much firmer, especially on the back nine.
“There was no comparison,” Garcia said of the change in conditions. “Yesterday was obviously -- it wasn't easy because the course plays tough itself. There was a little bit of wind, a bit of a different wind, a bit of a northern wind; today was more of a southern wind. But the course dried up a lot, the back-nine, the greens on the front nine were fairly receptive.
“Then we got to 11 and from that hole onwards, the greens were a lot firmer and with this wind it was difficult to hit some of those greens and obviously to try to close was a big challenge. We managed to hit a good amount of good shots, made some great up-and-downs, and very pleased with the way we ended up.”
Tim Petrovic was the only other player who went out in the afternoon and went low. He matched Garcia’s 66 to get to 5 under and share third-place with Scott Piercy. Nick Watney, Joe Ogilvie and Chad Collins share fifth at minus-4, and rounding out the top-10 another shot back were Ryuji Imada, Chris DiMarco, Chris Riley, Josh Teater, Keegan Bradley and amateur Jordan Spieth.
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