Dickerson grabs 36-hole lead after valuable putting tip

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JUNCTION CITY, Ore. -- Bubba Dickerson shot a 6-under-par 66 Friday to grab the lead after 36 holes of the Oregon Classic, the 25th stop on the 2008 Nationwide Tour schedule. Dickerson, a former U.S. Amateur champion, rolled in eight birdie putts during the second round at Shadow Hills Country Club and his 11-under 133 total is one stroke better than Darron Stiles (67) and and two better than first-round co-leader Matt Bettencourt (70), Brendon de Jonge (68), the Tour's leading money-winner, and Australian Won Joon Lee (67). Brian Smock (68) and Ryan Hietala (71) share sixth place, three back.

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Bubba Dickerson's best Nationwide Tour finish came at the 2005 National Mining Association Pete Dye Classic.

Inside the numbers

The 36-hole leaderboard

Rank Player Rd 1 Rd 2 To par 1 Bubba Dickerson 67 66 -11 2 Darron Stiles 67 67 -10 T3 Brendon de Jonge 67 68 -9 T3 Matt Bettencourt 65 70 -9 T3 Won Joon Lee 68 67 -9

Dickerson's good fortune stems largely from some putting help he received earlier in the week.

"There was a guy on the putting green who went through his whole system and basically told me I was using a bad putter for me, for the way I see the line," said Dickerson, a resident of Hilliard, Fla., near Jacksonville. "I was lining up way right, so now I'm more on line and putting better. Now I'm aiming more where I'm looking. If I get the speed going, I start making putts now."

Dickerson is No. 47 on the money list but has been slowly falling since a tie for fourth at the Henrico County Open, where he held a four-shot lead after 36 holes. His showing in April put him No. 16 at the time and since then he's made 10 of 16 cuts but has only one top-24 finish, a tie for 14th at the Ford Wayne Gretzky Classic in late June. THE 25 leading money winners at the end of the year will earn PGA TOUR cards for 2009. Dickerson has earned $114,078 but would probably need to get near the $200,000 mark to earn a return trip to the TOUR.

"You always feel like you need to make a bunch of money out here," he said. "There's no more urgency than at the beginning of the year. There's always something else. There's always q-school after this and there's always next year. I just want to play better, that's the bottom line."

The 27-year old was nearly perfect on Friday morning, hitting 16 of 18 greens. His only two hiccups came at Nos. 11 and 12, where he was just off the green but still only 10 feet from the cup. Both times, he was too aggressive and wound up missing a pair of four-foot par putts.

"I walked off the 12th green and said 'hey, I haven't really hit a bad golf shot today,'" he said. "On those two holes I was just on the wrong side of the hole. I made two bogeys from maybe being too aggressive because I was going along so good."

Stiles put together a near mirror-image of his opening-day 67 with six birdies and a bogey, which came when he missed a two-foot putt on the par-4, 11th hole.

"I had a lapse in concentration," he said. "I took too long over the ball. That's something that I've done in the past. I know it. For some reason I got stuck and I should have backed off, but I kept going and I missed it."

That was about the only mistake for Stiles, who entered the week No. 8 on the money list.

"Everything's working a little bit better this week than it has the last couple of weeks," said Stiles. "I feel like I've been striking the ball well the last two or three months, I just haven't gotten anything out of it."

Bettencourt was cruising along and was at 12-under par before being derailed late in the round by a double-bogey/bogey combination starting at the par-3, 16th, where he pushed his tee shot into the water. He settled for a disappointing 2-under-par 70.

"Actually I played pretty good today, other than the last three holes," said the Greenville, S.C. resident. "I hit the hole on five occasions from about 10 feet, lip outs. It was just one of those days they didn't fall in. The highest score I could have shot today was probably 70. This game is amnesia. You've got to just forget about it."

Second-Round News & Notes: Kris Blanks, Zoran Zorkic and Rob Bradley withdrew during the second round due to injuries...A total of 64 players made the 36-hole cut, which came at 3-under-par 141, which matches the lowest cut in tournament history (2002).

Here is how the top money-winners are faring this week: