DUBAI // So the tortoise sped up, spied the home stretch and ... craved a nap.
Two months spent hoarding euros fizzled rapidly into two days spent hoarding frustration for Graeme McDowell, the last man with a faint-and-getting-fainter chance of catching Martin Kaymer to win the Race To Dubai.
"I just don't think I have a huge amount in the tank," the US Open champion said after his second-round 73 left him at one-over par and eight shots behind Kaymer who is joint-fourth in the tournament while still €290,000 (Dh1.42 million) behind a front-running Kaymer on the 2010 European Tour money list.
The race seemed off after yesterday's play, and the depth of the ditch could owe to McDowell's schedule since mid-September, roaming Earth toward the Earth Course through Austria, Scotland, Spain, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong with a Ryder Cup in Wales thrown in.
My patience is very quick to go out there today," McDowell said. "I find this golf course quite difficult. The second I get out of position, I find it tough to scramble around here. I'm just not putting the greens very well, very grainy and tough to read."
And the stem of that: "I think the frustration level that I was displaying out there, it's definitely because I don't have a lot left in the tank. I don't have the energy to be patient with myself. I don't have the energy to be digging deep. It's OK when things are on a string, you're knocking down flags and making birdies, but when you've got to grind, it's just not in there."
Kaymer felt comfortable enough to say: "So he's 10 behind [the leaders]. It will be tough to win for him." And McDowell had to summon enough energy to dip into optimism to say: "It's not over. 65-65 is not out of the question, of course."