Tom McKibbin is 18 holes away from marking his return to the DP World Tour in stunning fashion with a win at the Porsche Singapore Classic where he’ll start the final round one shot off the lead.
After monsoon-like rains hit Laguna National Resort and forced Thursday’s play to be cancelled, the tournament was reduced to 54 holes and McKibbin found himself four shots adrift after a three-under 69 in Friday’s opening round.
Starting on the 10th in round two, he immediately moved to -4 and was on the birdie trail again on the par-5 13th. The highlight of the day came on 18 looked to have come on 18 when he made an eagle-three, but after two pars to start the front, he repeated the feat on the third to climb to nine-under.
With his tail up, he added further birdies at five and seven to hit the front, but unfortunately, his hopes of a blemish-free round ended at the last where he bogeyed and slipped back to -10, eventually being overtaken by American Dan Eriksen.
“There wasn’t much difference between today and yesterday,” McKibbin said afterwards. “I played very similar to yesterday and held a few more putts today and I just continued on the momentum that I was on. I feel like I’ve been playing quite nice recently, but just haven’t been able to finish the rounds off and today, I kept pushing and managed to get a few more birdies.
“I quite like how soft it is, it makes the fairways wider and obviously, the greens, you know it’s just going to sort of stay where it is or spin back. So I just sort of like the look I’ve played here, it’s my third time now and I’ve always enjoyed coming and playing this course. There’s just something there that suits my eye.
“I have a lot of putters and I went back to something a little familiar to me, a new putter but something I’ve sort of used before. I’ve been putting quite nicely this year, just that I haven’t been putting as good inside of eight feet as I had last year. So I wanted something that gets a little more comfortable within that sort of range and it’s been working so far.”
“It would mean a lot. I sort of tend to like these events. Just sort of being up there with the chance to go forward tomorrow means a lot. I’ve worked hard this year and the winter and it’s nice to see some good signs again.”
McKibbin will play in the penultimate threeball in Sunday’s final round, with sole leader and world number 1370 Eriksen joined by England’s Matthew Jordan and Frenchman Adrien Saddier who share second place with the Holywood man, while another Englishman in Richard Mansell and Paraguayan Fabrizio Zanotti who join McKibbin complete the quintet at -10.
Unfortunately, there is no place in the final round for Conor Purcell who made a spirited comeback mid-round to card five birdies in succession but had left himself too much to do after a poor start to the round and he missed the cut by three shots.
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