Poulter Up by Three at Rain-Delayed Turkish Airlines Open


Ian Poulter had it going before storms halted play in the Turkish Airlines Open. The third of four events in the European Tour's season-ending Final Series got underway Thursday.

The 38-year-old Poulter carded five birdies - and a bogey - through 14 holes before play was stopped for the day. Tee times were moved up 90 minutes Friday to avoid encountering bad weather but thunderstorms came through the area earlier than forecast, causing the players to leave the Montgomerie Maxx Royal course and head for the clubhouse.

Through 32 holes the Englishman is 13-under par, three strokes better than Zimbabwe's Brendon de Jonge, who was 3-under par through 13 holes before the second round was suspended until Saturday morning.

"I'm playing nicely, and to be on the top of the leaderboard is always nice," Poulter the European Tour's website. "It would have been nice to finish the round off, but I guess it wasn't meant to be today.

"So I guess we'll have to wait this one out, see what the weather is going to be like. Hopefully we can get round two finished at some stage tomorrow and obviously get cracking on round three. I'm playing great, so it's obviously a great feeling to be on the golf course when you're playing like that, and making birdies is always fun. Right now I'm pretty happy."

Tournament officials at first thought that play would resume after a stoppage of more than two-and-a-half hours, but the weather worsened shortly before the planned restart. The second round will re-commence Saturday morning at 8 a.m., with the third round to follow.

"As we went for the restart at 2.40 p.m., we had another cell just popping up southeast of us heading towards us and within 18 miles," explained tournament director Miguel Vidaor. "So unfortunately there's more and more thunderstorms all over the place, and there's a big band coming behind them, so we have had to cancel it and call it for the day and come back tomorrow and restart at 8.00.

"A 72-hole tournament is still very much achievable. What we are going to do now is we are restarting at 8.00 tomorrow morning. We don't have a cut, which means that we don't have to do a new draw between rounds two and three. The players are going to go with the same groupings as they are in round two, and they are going to play the same groupings on round three, which means we are going to gain a lot of time.

"All going well, we are looking at the last group going off for round three just after 11.00 tomorrow, which means we are going to be back on track finishing round three just after 4.00 tomorrow, which then gives us the option to redraw for the final round and have a proper final round on Sunday.

"The weather forecast tomorrow is still a low chance of a thunderstorm, nothing like today, and Sunday looks very good. So fingers crossed, I think we should be able to achieve 72 holes on Sunday."

Trailing Poulter by four are Australia's Wade Ormsby (2-under through 16) and American Brooks Koepka (6-under through 15).

After opening with a stellar 63, first-round leader Miguel Angel Jimenez was plus-1 through 14 holes before play was stopped.

For updated scores, visit http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2014/tournamentid=2014090/leaderboard/index.html.