Leaders deal with ill wind

The winds that blew across The Fairways at West Terrace golf course on Friday were uncommonly gentle, but swirling and maddeningly inconsistent.

That strange combination, coupled with the ever-increasing speed of the greens, confounded many of the competitors and prevented anyone from taking it extremely low during the second round of the 45th annual Lilac Invitational golf tournament.

But it didn’t do much to shake up the leaderboard as Chris Ming and Conner Robbins, two of the three first-round leaders who had opened with 65s, held on to a share of the second-round lead by posting relatively uneventful 69s.

Their 3-under-par totals put them both at 10-under 134 through 32 holes of the region’s only 72-hole tournament and left them tied with former Coeur d’Alene resident John Cook, who hooked a solid second-round 68 to his first-round total of 66.

Jim Bob Coleman, who matched the first-round 65s recorded by Ming and Robbins, hit three balls into hazards on the back-nine on Friday and finished with a 2-under 70 that left him a stroke off the lead and tied for fourth with T.J. Duncan at 135.

Past champion Storm Gleim, perennial contender Tom Robillard, Colin Guhlke and Sprague Kolp were all two more shots back at 137 heading into today’s third round.

“It was hard out there with the wind swirling,” said Cook, who graduated from Coeur d’Alene High School but now lives in Turlock, Calif., and plays regular on the Gateway Tour. “It feels like you can birdie every hole out here, and if you don’t you can get frustrated very easily.

“But because of the wind, and how it blew today, you have to be patient and realize you’re going to make some bogies, too – because if you get on the wrong side of some holes, you’re in trouble.”

Cook made five second-round birdies on The Fairways’ 6,459-yard layout. But he gave a stroke back on the normally benign par-4 sixth hole when he spun his approach shot back off the green and failed to get it up and down.

“It was just an ugly shot, poor decision-making,” he said of the costly wedge he hit from just 107 yards out. “Overall, I played OK today, but I definitely left a few strokes out there.”

Cook played the 413-yard finishing hole magnificently, however, blasting his drive to within 96 yards of the flagstick and then wedging his approach just 16 inches behind the hole for a tap-in birdie.

Ming took a much different approach to the 18th, where his indecision – a direct result of the swirling winds – cost him the outright second-round lead.

Ming, who plays out of Tacoma Golf & Country Club, had it to 4-under as he stepped to the tee on 18, and seemed destined to finish with a par, at worst, after steering his tee shot into the fairway just 155 yards from the pin.

“I knew I was going to hit a seven (iron),” he explained. “But the wind changed as I was walking to my ball, so I dropped down to an 8. I never really committed to the shot and just kind of came out of it.”

Ming’s approach bounced directly under a small tree just to the right of the 18th green and he failed to get his restricted-swing pitch close enough to make par.

Robbins, a former University of Washington standout in his first year out of college, picked up two strokes on Ming on the 18th by draining a downhill 15-foot putt for birdie that helped ease the pain of the bogey-6 he made on the par-5 12th after hitting his drive wide right into the water.

“I played better than I scored,” said the long-hitting Robbins, who missed a pair of 2-foot birdie putts on the front nine. “I can drive it up close to or onto a lot of the par-4s out here, but if I keep it in the fairway, I’ve got a better chance of getting up and down for birdie.

“Today, I drove it into the junk a couple of times and had to settle for pars.”

Coleman, after turning in 4-under 32, made a mess out of three of the easiest holes on the back nine, hitting into hazards on 11, 12 and 14.

On the reachable 327-yard par-4 11th, the Priest River native who now resides in Billings, Mont., gambled by hitting driver off the tee, caught the top of a tree and dropped into the water left of the fairway. He followed that disaster by knocking his drive through the fairway and into a soon-to-be water hazard on the par-5 12th for another bogie and then fatted his second shot on the par-5 14th into a recently constructed hazard and made his third bogey in four holes.

“I was actually playing really solid again,” Coleman said, “but then I made a mistake when I went for (the green) on 11. I don’t think I’ve ever hit in the water there, but I have hit it way right of the green and I was trying not to do that again. I was like, ‘If you’re going to try, hit it at the green,’ and then I caught the top of that tree.

“I felt like on 11, 12 and 14 I gave up five shots today. You’ve got to play those three holes two under par, at least, and I played them three over.”

Coleman, thanks to his back-nine travails, will play in today’s second-to-last threesome that includes Robillard and Duncan and tees off at 12:50 p.m. The tournament leaders – Cook, Ming and Robbins – will tee off at 1 p.m.