Brown in contention at windy Met PGA

To put it mildly, most golfers who played in the afternoon at the Piping Rock Club Tuesday felt as if they had had the wind knocked out of them.

One said, facetiously, "OK if I play another nine?" Another said it felt like a battle, "and I lost."

Truth is, there was nothing mild about what the wind did to the classic Charles Blair Macdonald design. It was rough out there for most of the players in the afternoon draw of the Met PGA Championship, which made Mark Brown's round that much more distinguished.

Brown, the head pro at Tam O'Shanter, got his season off to a great start with a win at the Long Island Open and put himself in position to end the year by taking the final local major. His 2-under par 69 in the stern breeze yesterday left him at 2-under for the 54-hole tournament and kept him within four shots of Danny Balin, an assistant pro at Burning Tree in Greenwich, Conn., who played in the morning and shot his second consecutive 68 to go 6-under.

Part of the genius of Mcdonald's design is that the course still can hold its own on any day, and can be particularly tough on a windy one. "There was a lot of playing defense out there," said Jeff Cowell of The Woodmere Club, who played well in coming in with a 74 in the afternoon.

"I love it. It's one of my favorites," Brown said of the layout in Locust Valley. It brought out the best in him.

"Today I hit it probably as solid as I've hit it all year," Brown said. " . . . Yesterday [Monday], I had 33 putts, which was the only bad thing. But today I made some putts, I made some birdies."

The key was hitting his drives far enough so he had short irons for approach shots and that he hit his irons crisply enough to get in position for makeable putts on the fast, sloped greens. "I didn't really get caught up in the wind that much," he said.

It still will take a solid round to knock off Balin, who is in the running for Met Section player of the year. He qualified for the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, won the Westchester Open, lost in a playoff at the Met Open and might be on his way to even bigger things. He will try for his PGA Tour card at Q School in November. Balin said, "All the experience helps."