The conditions again did their thing on both ICTSI Eagle Ridge Championship fields on Tuesday, with Guido van der Valk now the new men’s leader after the halfway mark and Mafy Singson now knocking on the door of a second win with a round left in the ladies event.

Van der Valk was the only player to crack par on another tough day, his three-under 69 giving him a one-shot lead over three players even as Singson fired a 74 to take a one-shot lead over Chihiro Ikeda into Wednesday’s final round at the Faldo layout in Trece Martirez, Cavite.

“This course is so hard. I really struggled a lot [in the first round], but I managed to hit it a bit better today,” Van der Valk, who has a 142 aggregate to lead LJ Go (72), Sean Ramos (73) and South Korea’s Rho Hyun-ho (73) by a shot, said.

“I also holed a lot of putts–20-footers that you don’t usually expect to make. That probably helped keep my score way lower than it should’ve been.”

First-round leader Ivan Monsalve, after opening with a 71 to lead by three, skied to an 84 to now be nine shots off.

Ikeda, the former Southeast Asian Games queen, fired a 75 to be a shot ahead of the third-running Marvi Monsalve, who shot a 74, as the ladies title race boils down to possibly seven players, counting Lk Go, who is four behind after a 76, and Chanelle Avaricio and Tiffany Lee, who are six and seven shots behind, respectively.

The course is playing so tough that multiple leg winners Avaricio and Lee stumbled with an 80 and 81, in that order.

“I realized it wasn’t just me [who played bad in the first round],” said Singson, who opened with an 80. “Of course, you want to play well, but given the tough conditions, I just had to accept that even if I hit a good shot, I won’t always get the reward.”

The Davao native is shooting for a follow-up to her triumph at Valley Golf last year. INQ