Nathan Kimsey will take a two-stroke lead into the weekend of the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge after a six under par 66 put him in pole position at the halfway stage.
The Englishman set the target at ten under early in the day and was left to watch on as his competitors were unable to catch him, with Denmark’s Peter Launer Baek, Frenchman Jeong weon Ko and Scotland’s Craig Ross his nearest challengers on eight under par.
The 29-year-old has been trending in the right direction recently, with a tie for tenth place in last week’s Italian Challenge Open following his tie for 13th at the Kaskáda Golf Challenge prior to that, and he is now hoping to put himself firmly in contention at Golf PGA France du Vaudreuil this weekend.
“I’m pretty pleased,” he said. “I got off to a fairly slow start, same as yesterday really, but I managed to kick on and make a few birdies and get it going. It was nice to finish with six under.
“When you play late-early, you feel like if you can go and add to what you had yesterday you can see yourself up there on the leaderboard early in the day and set a target. It’s nice to play well again today.
“It’s always nice playing when you’ve got a chance of winning. I’ve had a few weeks where I’ve been up there over the last month or so, so I’m used to it but hopefully we can go a bit better than the last few times.”
Kimsey highlighted both his driving and putting as key to his six under second round, with the latter coming after spending time with countryman Steven Tiley on the putting green during the practice days with the 2019 winner of the Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge looking to turn his hand to coaching.
“I’ve been driving it well lately, so I’ve been trying to take advantage of that and be quite aggressive off the tees. I’m trying to give myself as many wedges as I can to give myself chances and hopefully make a few putts.
“I was a bit disappointed with the wedge shot on the seventh because I flared it right but I got up there, had a good read on it and it was pretty straight all the way. I tried to give it a good roll and these greens are nice and quick so from 20-odd feet you feel like you just have to get it rolling and luckily it managed to drop in.”
Five players share fifth place on seven under par including in-form Irishman Ruadhri McGee and French duo Ugo Coussaud and Robin Sciot-Siegrist, who are looking to book their place in the Cazoo Open de France as the leading Frenchman on the French Challenge Order of Merit.
The cut fell at one under par, with 61 players surviving to compete over the weekend.
