Tunisia overtake Saudi Arabia at Arab Golf Championship in Egypt

Tunisia had a brilliant team score of 220, 4-over par, to overtake Saudi Arabia and lead the Arab Golf Championship at Dreamland Golf Resort, Cairo, Egypt after round two. Their two round posted score is 450.

On day two Tunisia had selected scores of 72, 74 and 74 in this best three scores from the team of four format for each round and they could discard their fourth score of 80. This gives them a four shot advantage with 36 holes to play.

The host country lie in third place on 233.

The UAE slipped from fourth to fifth with a second round team score of 241 swapping places with Qatar who improved their first round score by nine shots with a 228. In this second round 15 of the field of 45 players broke 80, one more than in round one.

The UAE’s Ahmed Skaik shot one of the best scores of the day, a one over par 73 including birdies on holes 1, 10 and 12 to stand on tee 15 level par for the round, but a disappointing bogey on the par 5, 15th, the second easiest hole on the course so far this week, saw Skaik finish his back nine in 35, moving upto tied 4th in the Individual Division on 149.

The UAE Playing Captain Khalid Yousuf said after the round: “Ahmed has impressed again with a decent score in conditions that were more challenging than for the first round. We hope that Ahmed continues his fine form for the next two rounds as our top ranked player and we plan that two of the three remaining UAE players, including me, can at least break 80, to help us get better each day. We are 14 shots behind third placed Egypt after two rounds but with arguably six counting rounds left, big moves, both up and down the leaderboard are often seen in this type of scoring format.”

The Individual Division first round leader Faisal Salhab (Saudi Arabia) remains at the top of the leaderboard with a second successive level par round of 72. Three shots behind Salhab is Saleh Ali Al Kaabi (Qatar) who followed up a first round 76 with the only sub-par of the tournament to date, an impressive one under the card 71, and moved up five spots on the day. Alongside Al Kaabi in tied second place is Eyles Barhoumi (Tunisia) with rounds of 73 and 74. A total of 15 players have beaten 160, 16 over par after the first two days.

The third round will take place on Tuesday and the final round of the 40th edition of the Men’s Arab Golf Championship on Wednesday.

Leaderboard

Tunisia 450

Saudi Arabia 454

Egypt 463

Qatar 465

UAE 477

Bahrain 478

Lebanon 487

Libya 493

Palestine 502

Oman 517

Kuwait 558