Marc Warren’s maturity is reflected in fatherhood, his attitude to his job and the feeling that a third European Tour title is not far away, perhaps even this weekend at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
The Scot is handily placed as one of four players just one off the lead held by Italy’s Francesco Molinari at the halfway point on a rain-soaked West Course, which yesterday felt less like mid-May than early February.
Those Euro Tour stars now plying their trade mostly in the guaranteed sunshine of the US Tour they’ve actually had just as many rain delays this year as the rest of the world, although it hasn’t dipped below 10 degrees like here were clearly confused and disorientated.
Rory McIlroy played as if he grew up on the equator rather than the shores of Belfast Lough. Graeme McDowell looked as if his game had gone the same way as his accent, over-Americanised. Luke Donald, winner of the last two years of this event and second in the one before that, never even got close to the cut.
Justin Rose made the cut but only barely, and only Lee Westwood looked halfway at home, but he was third in his group behind leader Molinari and Ernie Els, although well positioned just four off Molinari’s six-under mark.
Warren, meanwhile, limited his damage to just two bogeys in an excellent morning 70 to follow his first round 69 and then didn’t do a great job in hiding his glee as the weather worsened again just as he was leaving the scorer’s hut.
“Going to be tough for the boys this afternoon so I should be in a good position,” he predicted.
Warren knows how tough it can be at the front end of tournaments, especially when he let slip the Spanish Open last month and the Scottish Open at Castle Stuart last July, but perspective has come from his new family, wife Laura having given birth to son Archie just before Spain.
“It certainly reminds you there’s more important things,” he said. “The finish to Spain was disappointing but it was straight on to Skype to see them and it was forgotten about.
“Even last night, after a good round, it still helps. You usually go back home and think about the golf, critique your round and what you could have done better, but seeing him and Laura, it totally changes.”
The maturity on course manifests in course management, a big benefit around Wentworth in conditons such as Friday’s. Warren used the driver only four times, and hit a four-iron off the tee at the par five final hole.
He said: “Two or three years ago I’d try to cut a driver around the trees. Now it’s better to keep it under the tree-line and out of the wind.”
Warren knows he’s improved since Spain as well, due to changes to his wedges.
“The grooves were totally gone on my gap wedge which maybe explains why I was moaning so much about my wedge play,” he said. “I feel I’ve been playing well for more than a year, really.”
You’d have been pretty canny to have chosen Molinari as the member of the returning Ryder Cup team to be the leader, but his solid driving game allied to finding the greens a little more to his liking brought him in with the equal best round of the day, a 68.
“Obviously I live over here now, and it’s been like this most of the winter,” said the Italian.
Too many of the top stars seem to have some sort of inbuilt aversion to Wentworth, and that seems to be the case with McIlroy, who has struggled here since Ernie Els’s course changes were enacted.
Rory wondered aloud afterwards whether his weekend entertainment would be the start of Roland Garros in Paris or the Grand Prix in Monaco, which perhaps suggests how much attention his head was giving the event.
He did, however, promise the weekend would involve some sort of a range work, perhaps needed after he carved his drive out of bounds at 17 to end his slim hopes of making the cut.
“I’m looking forward to playing some golf when I’m not having to wear four layers,” he added.
Graeme McDowell and Ian Poulter are other well-known Wentworth agnostics and shot 75 and 76 to miss the cut comfortably. Only Westwood, notably claiming his short game as “red hot”, and Rose, with a birdie up the last that saved him, stayed around for the weekend.
Even Donald, the arch-specialist for the West Course, struggled.
“I need to be doing the things Luke Donald usually does well,” he said. “Be tidy around the green, make those putts when I need to. But I’ll be back. Failure is a much bigger motivator for me than success.”
See more from Steve Scott at Wentworth in Saturday’s Courier.