Sheffield's Danny Willett facing another missed cut at French Open

Masters champion Danny Willett was facing an uphill struggle to avoid a second successive missed cut when the 100th French Open resumed in Paris on Friday.
Danny Willett is struggling at the French OpenDanny Willett is struggling at the French Open
Danny Willett is struggling at the French Open

Willett, who made an early exit from the BMW International Open last week, struggled to an opening 75 at Le Golf National which included a double bogey on the 18th after finding water with his approach.

And the world number nine continued to look out of sorts in blustery and overcast conditions in round two, dropping shots on the 14th and 15th to lie six over par, four shots outside the projected cut.

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Starting on the back nine at the 2018 Ryder Cup venue, Willett opened with four straight pars before carding a bogey on the par-five 14th after twice tangling with the thick rough and then failing to get up and down from a greenside bunker.

Another shot went on the next, but that represented a relatively good result after the 28-year-old pushed his approach into the water to the right of the green.

At the top of the leaderboard, defending champion Bernd Wiesberger was having no such problems, the Austrian starting his round by picking up shots on the 10th and 11th and adding three more birdies in a row from the 15th.

At nine under par Wiesberger enjoyed a four-shot lead over Spain's Adrian Otaegui, who had birdied the second, and overnight leader Lucas Bjerregaard, who was among the later starters.

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The last time Willett missed two cuts in a row was coincidentally in the US Open and French Open last year, but he then bounced back to finish sixth in the Open a fortnight later.

And he had certainly not given up on qualifying for the final two rounds in Paris either, with birdies on the 17th and third taking him back to four over par and within two shots of the projected cut.

At the other end of the leaderboard, Wiesberger's commanding lead had disappeared in a matter of minutes as he found water on the 18th to run up a triple-bogey seven, with Otaegui carding a birdie on the third to make it a two-way tie on six under par.

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