Chrysler Championship

Surprise, surprise: Lowery up, Singh out

Lowery's solid game draws attention from competitors, and Singh, the defending champ, misses par - and the cut.

By BOB HARIG
Published October 29, 2005

PALM HARBOR - Davis Love happened to catch a glimpse of Steve Lowery on the driving range Friday morning and would not have otherwise been moved to watch a fellow pro hit golf balls ... except for the fact that Lowery seemed to be hitting them so well.

Later, while going about his business on the Copperhead Course during the second round of the Chrysler Championship, Love took a look at a leaderboard, and sure enough, there was Lowery - on top.

"I said, boy he is swinging good," Love said. "Then I go out on the third hold and say, oh, yeah, he's scoring good, too."

Lowery, 45, is the leader through 36 holes of the $5.3-million tournament, and if he is a bit of a surprise, then what Vijay Singh did in two rounds was downright shocking.

The defending champion never had failed to break par in eight previous rounds on the Copperhead Course. But his 74-71 effort missed the 36-hole cut, meaning two weekends off in a row for the No. 2-ranked player in the world.

Lowery knows all about missed cuts, as he had a slew of them at the beginning of the season, although the 18-year PGA Tour veteran has had his two best finishes of the year in the past month.

His 5-under-par 66 put him at 134, 8 under par, and gave him a two-shot lead over Bo Van Pelt, one of the few players to post a low score in the afternoon, when breezy conditions made scoring difficult.

Love was tied with another veteran, Germany's Bernhard Langer, at 137, along with Sweden's Carl Pettersson and Tom Pernice, who finished second last week at the Funai Classic. They are three back. Five players, including Retief Goosen, Tom Lehman and Charles Howell, were four back at 138. First-round leader Jeff Brehault shot 74 to fall back to 139 along with Clearwater's John Huston.

Van Pelt and Pettersson were the only players to make it around Copperhead without a bogey.

Lowery began the 2005 season missing eight straight cuts and missed 11 of his first 12. At one point, he filled out an application for the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, figuring he would be unable to finish among the top 125 money winners.

"It's tough when you are not playing well, you don't think you'll ever play good again," said Lowery, who has two PGA Tour victories in his career, the last in 2000, and has improved to 109th on the money list. "And when you're playing good, you don't think you'll ever play bad again. That's the way golf is. That was a stretch I haven't had in my career. I don't think I ever missed that many cuts in a row. It was a wake-up call. I had to start practicing harder and recommit myself to improving and it took a long time to get it going."

"You just never know," Love said. "He looked confident on the driving range. It's a good title for a book. Golf is a game of confidence. When you are confident, you swing better, you putt better, you walk taller. And when you get in a bad frame of mind, it just keeps going.

"It's funny, you can watch guys go up and down, and usually it's more attitude. But usually the guys with the best attitudes are the most consistent. It's hard to get confidence. But once you get it, somehow it builds on itself."

Case in point: Van Pelt, who also had early-season troubles, missing four straight cuts to start the year. "I didn't think I could break an egg," he said.

But he has bounced back and shown the form that helped him finish 39th on the money list in 2004. He has four top-10 finishes and has climbed to 57th with $1,294,989. Now the big goal is a victory.

"That's the next hurdle to get over," said Van Pelt, in his third full season on tour after playing the Nationwide Tour. "My attitude is to try and give myself as many chances as I can. I feel if I can get myself there enough, it'll happen."

Love, 41, and Langer, 48, know all about that. They have been at this for a long time, and both have seen some time pass since their last victories. Love has not won since 2003. Langer, the 2004 European Ryder Cup captain, won the last of his 61 worldwide victories in 2002 in Spain at the Volvo Masters.

"That's really all that's left to me, to get back in the winner's circle," said Love, who, despite not winning, is 15th on the money list this year with nearly $2.3-million. "This week and next week (Tour Championship) are the last two chances."

[Last modified October 29, 2005, 01:46:07]