We had two weather delays today at Warren Golf Course at Notre Dame but that didn’t prevent mini-tour pro Nick Bienz from having a stellar round of 3-under (68) today at the Indiana Open. Hoagland’s Bienz went into the second round sitting with a one stroke advantage of 5-under par over Evansville’s Ben Hoagland and Zionsville’s Michael Davan.
Bienz went into today’s round prepared after taking notes from how the course played on day one, pushing his two-day total to 8-under par.
“I knew it was going to be super windy early on so I actually took a hybrid out of my bag and put a two iron in because the fairways were firm and fast during the first round. With this course not being overly long, there are going to be a lot of 2 irons and 3 woods off the tee” said Bienz.
Bienz had another solid performance today, noting that he could probably count on one hand the amount of fairways he missed over both days combined. The weather delays did not seem to put too much of an effect on Bienz even though the stop and go halted his play a few times today.
Bienz has been in contention to win the Indiana Open a few times over the past few years going into last year’s final round in the leading group but coming up short behind Champion Seth Fair.
“I’ve been in contention before but in very different ways than this. The first one would have been at French Lick many years ago and I think I was one off the lead or in the lead after the first round and then completely wiped out. Last year was totally different because I shot over par the first day, battled back for the most part in round two, and then had to go really low the last day to even give myself a chance” said Bienz.
Although he has been in contention previously, this is the first time that he has been able to hold onto the lead going into the final day.
“With the way the weather looks tomorrow, I have no idea what is going to happen. We could play 7 holes or we could play all 18. But for the most part it’s just me keeping my head down and I made sure not to look at the leaderboard once today” said Bienz.
Trailing three strokes behind after finishing today’s round at 1-under (70) is recent IGA Match Play Champion Ben Hoagland, who is also looking for his first win.