By Kent Gray
If you’re only as good as your last performance then Thomas Pieters is going to take some beating at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship presented by EGA. If you’re only as good as your last shot, then engrave the famed Falcon trophy now.

The 25-year-old Belgian miraculously holed out of the sand with the 65th and final shot of his splendid second round on The National Friday to nab the halfway lead by a shot from 31-year-old Spaniard Jorge Campillo.

“Hit a terrible slice with my driver and then I hit a quick hook with my 6-iron [into the greenside trap on the 9th hole, his 18th] and I made it. That’s it,” said the world No.40.

“It was nice to hole one on the last after two terrible shots. But the rest of it was decent today. Ball striking was good. Yeah, I mean, hit most of the middle of the greens. If I had a wedge, I went at the flag and I think I got up-and-down or made birdie with a wedge in my hand three or four times. It wasn’t really that fancy today but a very good round.”

It sure was and most notably for the way the oft fiery Antwerp resident keep his cool under the blowtorch of a wayward shot or two, like on the 9th.

What’s been the key to these opening 36 holes? “In a positive mind-set, keeping calm,” said Pieters. Is that something that you consciously sought to acquire, to sort of reset, in a sense, mentally? “Yeah, definitely. Yeah, exactly. I can’t put it any better than that.

“There’s little things I do, I tell myself. I’m not going to share, but just like to keep a positive mind-set and then to forget if I hit a bad shot. On the last, prime example. Two terrible shots and I finished with a good one.”

Pieters’ calm pacesetting is certainly timely with European Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn on site. With three quality top 10s – 4th at The Masters, T-4 in the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and T-5 at the WGC-Mexico Championship – last season wasn’t a disaster. But a fourth European Tour title – his last win came at the 2016 Made in Denmark – would be a Ryder Cup qualifying points boon for the star debutant from 2016 where he won four points from four at Hazeltine.

Pieters’ clearly enjoys Abu Dhabi G.C. after finishing T-4 in 2015 and runner-up to Rickie Fowler a year later. He’s looking forward to a big weekend, albeit with a slight tweak to his “decent game plan” for The National.

“I’m going to eat, practice, make sure I don’t hit quick hooks anymore [or] slices and we’ll be ready.”