Go 5 shots adrift despite 67 in Saudi Open golf

MANILA, Philippines — Lloyd Go used a solid frontside run to put himself in the mix but his 67 still left him five strokes behind a hot-starting Joshua Grenville-Wood after 18 holes of the $200,000 Saudi Open at the Riyadh Golf Club in Saudi Arabia Thursday.

Go blistered the par-72 desert layout’s frontside with four birdies but slowed down with a three-birdie, two-bogey card in the last nine holes to settle for a five-under round in a day of torrid scoring at the par-72 layout with 64 of the 123-player starting field breaking par.

The rising Cebuano star, seeking a breakthrough on the Asian Development Tour after churning out a couple of runner-up finishes, including a playoff setback in the BRG Open in Vietnam last September, stood at joint eighth with five others but five shots behind the Englishman, whose 12-birdie, two-bogey effort set a new course record.

Grenville-Wood also built a three-stroke lead over local amateur Saud Abdullah Al Sharif, Ahmed Marjan of Morocco and Indonesian Naraajie Ramadhan Putra, who turned in identical 65s.

Go, who reached the semis of the recent ICTSI Villamor Match Play, flashed his awesome power to dominate the first two par-5s of the long 7,434-yard layout, and hacked out a pair of solid approach shots for birdies on Nos. 7 and 9.

He failed to get up-and-down on the par-4 10th but birdied the next two, including the par-5 No. 12. He dropped another shot on the 206-yard par-3 14th and missed netting another stroke on the last par-5, the 599-yard No. 15, but birdied the next to finish with a 32-35.

Teeing off on No. 10, Grenville-Wood hit a three-birdie string from No. 11 then rebounded from a mishap on the par-3 14th with four straight birdies for a 30. Like Go, he also birdied the frontside’s two long holes and added three more against a bogey for that 62.