Ruaidhri McGee continues to fire on all cylinders as he moved into the top-five at the Le Vaudreuil Challenge in France with a superb four-under 68 in his second round.
The 31-year-old has fairly hit the ground running since his return to the course, finishing runner-up at the Open de Bretagne in his second start since 2020 and has now positioned himself to make a run in Le Vaudreuil, too.
McGee carded five birdies and just one bogey in his round which, when allied with his first round 69, has him in a share of fifth at seven-under-par and just three shots off the lead heading into the weekend.
That lead is held by England’s Nathan Kimsey, who shot a six-under 66 early on day two to move top of the leaderboard at 10-under, and he could watch on in comfort as the rest of the field couldn’t catch him.
“I’m pretty pleased,” said the 29-year-old. “I got off to a fairly slow start, same as yesterday really, but I managed to kick on and make a few birdies and get it going. It was nice to finish with six-under.
“When you play late-early, you feel like if you can go and add to what you had yesterday you can see yourself up there on the leaderboard early in the day and set a target. It’s nice to play well again today.
“It’s always nice playing when you’ve got a chance of winning. I’ve had a few weeks where I’ve been up there over the last month or so, so I’m used to it but hopefully we can go a bit better than the last few times.”
As he mentions, Kimsey has been trending the right way recently having finished in the top-15 in the last two outings and looks to have found some form in his game, but he has a strong field chasing him.
Denmark’s Peter Launer Baek, France’s Jeong weon Ko and Scotland’s Craig Ross, the overnight leader, are two shots behind him at eight-under, with McGee in the group at seven-under alongside the likes of France’s Robin Sciot-Siegrist and England’s Marco Penge.
Unfortunately McGee was the only Irishman to make the cut as the other three local players fell by the wayside, with Conor Purcell left to rue a particularly rough stretch around the middle of his round for missing out on the weekend.
The 25-year-old dropped six shots in six holes and, despite a run of three birdies in four holes towards the end of his round to recover for a 72, he would miss out by one shot after finishing level-par, with the cut falling at one-under.
It also wasn’t to be for Robin Dawson, who started the day level-par but finished with a 75, or John Murphy, whose 79 saw him finish the tournament eight-over.
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