• Open Championship, Day Two

Conditions encourage mind over matter for early leaders

Darren Clarke credited some late work with a doctor for his fine start © Getty Images

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On what started out as a beautifully calm, sunny day on the Kent coast, the early players in Friday's second round at the Open Championship were not able to distract themselves with complaints about the weather.

Where on Thursday the morning finishers had concluded their rounds only to be be posed numerous questions about the difficulty of the wet and windy conditions, on Friday there were no such problems on which to focus.

What was the biggest difficulty they faced while navigating around Royal St George's, then? The pin placements? The tee positions? The hayfever that suddenly seemed to be affecting much of the gallery?

Neither (well, except for Charl Schwartzel, who struggled with the latter problem). Instead, almost without exception, players stressed the mental challenges they faced throughout their round.

Finding fairways was troublesome. Playing into the correct spots on the greens made you think. Lag-putting left little margin for error. Spotting the nuanced borrows in the five-footers for par that simply had to be made caused untold anxiety.

Welcome to links golf - even without the weather as a weapon, a player's mind remains his most important club.

American Lucas Glover topped the early leaderboard at four-under, following a first round 66 in the best of Thursday's weather with a safe round of 70. The 2009 US Open champion credited his success on the fact he has finally come to accept the vagaries of links golf.

"I've become comfortable," Glover said. "Originally I wasn't. I'd get mad if one rolled into a bunker or bounced off the green when I hit an average shot, but if you don't hit the shot you're supposed to here you get penalised."

That's part and parcel of this type of golf, something Americans used to playing at the stadium courses loved by the PGA Tour don't always come to accept. Phil Mickelson may have played in nearly 20 Opens, but even he began this week by, a bit worryingly, stating he was "going to try to learn and enjoy the challenge of playing links golf".

Glover was in fact tied for the clubhouse lead with the man he followed home down the 18th late in the morning, Darren Clarke. The Northern Irishman was in high spirits after yet another solid Open display - but basically admitted in his media press conference that a Wednesday session with Dr. Bob Rotella was the key reason behind his upturn in form.

Dr. Rotella is a famed putting coach, but more importantly has branded himself as one of the game's premier psychologists - or 'mind coaches'. His books all hit on a similar theme, from 'Putting out of your mind" to "Golf is a game of confidence."

Clarke, it seems, picked up both traits after the putting green resumption of their working relationship.

"Dr. Bob's thought process is very simple, and that seems to suit me very well," Clarke said. "I haven't been able to see him as I haven't been playing in America that much. Many have tried [to replace him], and I've broken many of them.

"I didn't see Dr. Bob until Wednesday, at which stage I was struggling a bit on the greens. I was hitting it well but struggling a little bit on the greens, and then I just found my feeling."

Clarke's countryman, Graeme McDowell, suffered at the opposite end of the spectrum as he missed the cut following a worrying second round 77, enough for a five-over total that few would have predicted at the start of the day.

Complaining that his "attitude has been pretty average the last two days", even the former US Open champion - who yesterday joked "a few medicinal cold beers" would be his post-round routine - revealed he had already started taking Clarke's path to a different sort of doctor.

Graeme McDowell said he was "a bit of a mental case" during a tournament-ending 77 © PA Photos

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"I've been doing a little work with Rotella," McDowell revealed. "Maybe I need to do a little more work with him, get on the couch and tell him all my problems!

"I've always enjoyed the mental side of the game, and I wouldn't say I'm enjoying it so much right now because I'm a bit of a mental case out there.

"I need an attitude readjustment."

Charl Schwartzel may hardly have seemed sympathetic about the plight of the spectator he hit on the head with a wayward three-wood down the 14th ("It was actually a good break. I felt sorry for the guy, but it's one of those things"), but he too hit upon the need for patience - even after carding the low round of the day in a 67.

"We were complaining it was so dusty and struggling with hayfever out there," the South African, already a major winner in 2011, said. "It's getting firm and bouncy - and the ball is so unpredictable on the bounce."

The key, he feels, is to realise and utterly believe that the same perceived bad breaks are happening to every other player.

"That's what you sort of comfort yourself in," he noted, even cracking a smile when it was pointed out to him that those who had started early on Thursday and late on Friday would play in the worst of both day's weather. "You hope someone else is getting these sort of breaks. Everyone is going to [struggle] … there's sort of a margin of luck."

The weekend will see the field cut in half - "mental cases" like McDowell will head home, while those who have so far exhibited confidence and patience will continue to fight it out for the Claret Jug.

At present, many will like Glover's chances - as a former major champion, he knows all about the upcoming pressures and appears, unlike Schwartzel ("To be honest, if it stays dry it'll help me"), to have braced himself for both the best and worst of the weather.

Yet the American doesn't feel he is better placed than anyone else.

"I'd like to say I've got a slight advantage because I've been there before, but it's going to be tough here on Saturday and Sunday," Glover noted. "I can always tell myself at the start of a round or at the end of the round that I've done it before so I've got that in the back of my head.

"Whether it makes a difference if I execute a five-iron on 18 or not, I don't think it does."

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