Grace Now Up by Five in Alfred Dunhill Championship


Branden Grace continued his outstanding play on Friday at the Alfred Dunhill Championship. The full-field event got underway Thursday at Leopard Creek Country in Malelane, South Africa.

After opening with a stellar 10-under 62 on Thursday, Grace, a 26-year-old from Pretoria, carded a 6-under 66 to reach 16-under 128, five strokes ahead of Italy's Francesco Molinari, who's shot rounds of 68 and 65.

Grace couldn't quite duplicate his spotless 10-birdie outing of Thursday, but he still tacked on seven more birdies - along with his first dropped shot of the tournament with a bogey on the par-3 fifth - to extend his overnight lead from three to five strokes.

After a winless 2013 following an outstanding four-win campaign in 2012, Grace feels like he's at a place where that drought will end. "This is a golf course that suits me and if I keep hitting everything in play the way I have been the first two days then it should be a good weekend," he told the European Tour's website.

"The pins have been kind so far; I'm sure there's going to be a couple of tricky and sticky pins out there on the weekend, but I'll just stick to the game plan and see what the next two rounds offer us. Today was great - the ball-striking wasn't as good as yesterday.

"I kept it going - there was a little bit of a slip there due to a lack of concentration, but it happens," he said of the fifth hole. "I've been hitting it well and kept on hitting good putts out there."

Six back is Grace's fellow South African Tjaart van der Walt (67), while Shaun Norris and Lucas Bjerregaard each had 67s to tie England's Danny Willett (69) at 135.

Willett won last week's limited-field Nedbank Golf Challenge in Sun City.

Molinari knows he has some work to do to rein in Grace. "I played really well today," said the 32-year-old. "I holed some really good putts - the last four or five holes could have been better, but 7-under is always a good round. Branden has set a low target for everyone, so it was good to get some birdies."

Tied for seventh at 136 are South Africans Chris Swanepoel (68) and Louis De Jager (67), Denmark's Morten Orum Madsen (66) and England's Andrew Johnston (67).

Defending two-time champion Charl Schwartzel has to play catch-up to make it three in a row. The 30-year-old from Johannesburg had a 70 and is 11 strokes behind Grace.

For all the scores, visit http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2015/tournamentid=2014096/leaderboard/index.html.