Ronan Mullarney is safely through to the final round of the Alps Tour’s Red Sea Little Venice Open at Sokhna Golf Club in Suez, Egypt, but he’ll be the only Irishman as Hugh Foley, Robert Moran, Marc Boucher and John Murphy all missed out.
It was another unseasonably cool and blustery day on the Gulf of Suez with just 30 of the 120 players able to break par in round two and only 34 in red figures at the 36-hole mark.
Mullarney, fresh off a tie for second in the opening event of the Alps Tour schedule which was contested over the B & C course at the same venue, opened with a one-under 71 on the A & B course, but found the going tough in the early stages as part of the afternoon wave in round two.
Bogeys on the 10th and 12th holes – his first and third – saw him slip outside the provisional cutline at the time, but it wasn’t long before his head was back above water as he responded with back-to-back birdies on 13 and 14.
He traded one more birdie and bogey before the turn and kept his card clean on the front, adding a birdie on the par-3 sixth to card another one-under 71 and move to -2 for the week. It leaves him tied for 18th heading into the final round, and he’ll tee off just over an hour ahead of the leaders, hoping to put another good final round together and make a sizable leap up the leaderboard.
Robert Moran had matched Mullarney’s opening round tally, but a poor start that featured two bogeys and a double bogey in his six holes left him with a lot of catchup work to do and he couldn’t quite manage it, missing the cut on +3 alongside Marc Boucher who shot a 75 to slip back from level-par.
John Murphy came closest to booking a final-round tee time, but a bogey on the 16th cost him and he missed out by the minimum at +2, while Hugh Foley, who finished tied for 10th on his Alps Tour debut the week prior, also missed out.
The trio of Alvaro Hernandez Cabezuela of Spain, Quentin Debove of France and Italy’s Jacopo Vecchi Fossa lead the way on -8, with the former shooting a five-under 67 that was the second lowest round of the day.
They are two clear of another Frenchman in Aymeric Laussot in solo fourth, with a further four players locked on -5.
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