Golf Roundup : Self-Imposed Penalty Costs Floyd a Share of the Lead

A self-imposed penalty for an infraction no one else saw kept Ray Floyd one shot out of the lead Friday in the $600,000 Manufacturers Hanover Westchester golf tournament at Harrison, N.Y.

Floyd finished the day one stroke back of Willie Wood, Brett Upper and Tom Sieckmann, who tied for the second-round lead at 134. Wood, who shot a 29 on the front nine, had an eight-under-par 63. Sieckmann shot a 69, Upper a 66.

Floyd’s round of 67 on the rain-dampened Westchester Country Club course included a penalty stroke he called on himself on the third hole.

“It’s no big deal; it’s the rules of golf,” Floyd said.

On No. 3, he had a putt of 18 to 20 feet for a birdie and ran it up less than a foot from the cup. He then walked to the ball, lined up his putt and addressed the ball.

“The ball moved,” he said. “It changed locations. A lot of times, it’ll rock and settle back in the same spot, but this one changed locations.

“That’s a stroke,” he said.

He tapped the ball in the hole for an apparent par, then told Donnie Hammond, “I made 5 on the hole.

“He had this what-are-you-talking-about look on his face,” Floyd said, “so I told him the ball moved.”

At Malvern, Pa., Juli Inkster shot a five-under-par 67 to take a four-stroke lead in the $450,000 LPGA McDonald’s championship, setting a tournament record with a two-round total of 135.

Playing on the 6,313-yard White Manor Country Club course, Inkster broke the record of 136 set last year by defending champion Alice Miller.

Mary Beth Zimmerman, who overcame a double bogey on her first hole to shoot a 69, was second at 139.

Pat Bradley, who won last week’s LPGA Championship, failed by one stroke to make the cut. She followed her first-round 80 with a 73 and was at 153. The round ended a streak of 37 straight tournaments in which she had made the cut.

Chi Chi Rodriguez, playing Bent Tree Country Club at Dallas for the first time, birdied five straight holes, and Don January had four consecutive birdies to share the first-round lead in the Senior Players ReUnion Pro-Am with six-under-par 66s.

They held a one-shot lead over PGA Senior Tour rookie Al Chandler, who birdied the last hole he played for a 67.

Briton Robert Lee shot a seven-under-par 65 in the $300,000 British Masters at Woburn, England, for a two-round total of 134 to upstage Spain’s Severiano Ballesteros and West Germany’s Bernhard Langer.

Lee was one stroke ahead of Ballesteros, with Langer a shot further back. Ballesteros and Langer each shot 68s.

A watchmaker’s son from Twickenham, Lee made his breakthrough in the pro ranks last year by winning the Cannes and Brazilian Open tournaments.