Leishman one-shot back after Masters second round, tied for second

The situation might have been as pressure-packed of a moment as Marc Leishman could have experienced at the time.

At the ripe age of 13, all he was trying to do was win the Warrnambool Golf Club championship in his native Australia. To take the title, Leishman had to beat his father, Paul, an accomplished golfer.

The teen did, by a stroke, though the magnitude of the achievement might have eluded him at the time.

“I didn’t know what pressure was when I was 13 years old,” he said.

He certainly grasps the concept now and also knows that it doesn’t get much more harrowing than the situation he’s in now. After turning in a second-round 1-over 73, Leishman remains high on the Masters Tournament leaderboard, finishing the day at 5-under and tied for second with Fred Couples.

Leishman shared the tournament lead when he completed his round, but fellow Aussie Jason Day took the 36-hole lead at 6-under with his 4-under 68.

“This is different,” Leishman said. “This is bigger.”

Leishman used a blistering back nine in Thursday’s opening round to post 6-under 66 and share the 18-hole lead with Sergio Garcia. Though he couldn’t recapture the fire he caught on Augusta National’s back nine, he also didn’t let his round spin out of control like a wildfire when he posted two bogeys in a three-hole stretch from Nos. 4-6 to drop him to 4-under.

Instead, Leishman regrouped and got both strokes back with back-to-back birdies on Nos. 7 and 8. He stumbled only once on the back, a bogey on No. 14, to finish a solid round of 73.

“It’s not as good of a round as I had (Thursday), but I’m probably equally happy with it,” Leishman said. “It’s good to stay up there on the leaderboard, and even better when I was struggling to fight and get it back.”

In his only PGA Tour victory, he came from back in the field to win the Travelers Championship, so he hasn’t often been in the position of being the hunted, particular­ly when the hunters are the likes of Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, Angel Cabrera, Brandt Snedeker, Adam Scott, Lee Westwood and Justin Rose – all of whom are within three shots of the leader.

“I was looking at all of them,” Leishman said of the star-packed leaderboard. “I do that at every tournament, so it’s nothing different. I’ve tried to not do that, but it just hasn’t worked for me. I like to know where I’m at, what the situation is, whether I’m ahead, behind on the cut line.

“So I just like to know where I am and it’s pretty cool to see your name up at the top there,” he said. “But we are competing against each other and that’s what I’ve probably learned over the last few years, that those guys are great players, but I’ve got to compete against them and try to beat them. I can’t put them on a pedestal.”