Bitterly cold, drizzly and with a breeze that froze nose-tips — the morning’s weather conditions were hard, to say the least. The first one to catch a cold off the Irish summer, unfortunately, was yesterday’s star.

In a stunning 12-shot difference from the terrific start, Jyoti Randhawa carded a dismal five-over today. He’s slid down to 15th spot at the halfway mark of the Emaar-MGF Indian Masters, and taking over his top position is a player who might have thought Delhi Golf Club was somewhere back home.

Ireland’s Damien McGrane’s three-under on a day of terrible numbers on those scorecards gives him an aggregate of eight-under 136 for the second round lead.

North Irishman Graeme McDowell is tied for second with France’s Raphael Jacquelin and Hendrik Buhrmann from South Africa.

Down five rungs on the leaderboard are finally the Indian names of Arjun Atwal and Digvijay Singh. Tied for sixth with England’s Benn Barham, Dane Thomas Bjorn, Maarten Lafeber from the Netherlands and Spaniard Jose Manuel Lara, the two are four off the lead.

Ernie Els is, well, a bit low in the order. The crowd-puller pasted together a two-under today and to almost everyone’s relief made it to the weekend with a one-over aggregate. Jeev Milkha Singh wasn’t as lucky with a first day’s repeat of five-over.

The cut was applied at three-over.

Randhawa had started the day with a dropped shot (on the starting 10th), followed by a very short putt-miss on the 16th, showing him much of the day to come.

... contd.