By The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES – Considering the amount of rain that soaked Riviera, Chad Campbell didn’t expect to complete his second round Friday in the Nissan Open.

The bigger surprise was where he finished.

Equipped with a vastly improved short game, Campbell nearly holed out two shots and only came close to a bogey once in a round of 6-under 65 that gave him a three-shot lead over Robert Allenby.

Whether he keeps that lead won’t be determined until Saturday.

A four-hour rain delay in the morning made it certain that first-round leader Brian Davis, Tiger Woods and the rest of the late starters would have to return Saturday and face a long day – weather permitting.

Seventy-two players trudged in from Riviera, some of them with mud speckled on their faces and coating the bottom of their rain pants. They had to return at 7:30 a.m. Saturday.

“I’m definitely a lot happier than a lot of the guys out there right now,” Allenby said after his 67.

Davis, who opened with a 65, had the last tee time. He was about to hit his opening tee shot on No. 10 when the siren sounded to suspend the second round because of darkness. None of the late starters finished even nine holes.

Woods was 1 under for his round and 5 under for the tournament with his ball in the fifth fairway. Campbell finished about the time Woods headed for the first tee.

“Honestly, I thought we wouldn’t start,” said Campbell, who was at 9-under 133. “But the course was great. I gave myself a lot of chances and was able to make a lot of putts for a change.”

The short game, especially his putting, is what has held Campbell back.

He won his first PGA Tour event two years ago at the Tour Championship on the strength of a third-round 61, then rallied from four shots behind on the last day to win the Bay Hill Invitational last March.

In between, the results have been spotty.

Campbell went to see Dwaine Knight, his college coach at UNLV, earlier this month to work on his putting, and it’s starting to pay off.

Ditto for Allenby, who won the 2001 Nissan Open – in the rain, no less – but has gone the last three years without winning on tour. He thinks he knows why.

“I haven’t been hitting the ball very well,” Allenby said. “My short game has been terrible. My putting has been horrendous, and I have been driving the ball pretty bad. And I’ve been hitting my irons pretty average, too.”

The good news?

“I walked pretty well from tee to green,” Allenby said.

It wasn’t all that bad. The Aussie can get it going when the putts start falling, and that was the case Friday. He holed a 25-foot eagle putt on the first hole, and his irons looked just fine – into 2 feet for a birdie on the par-3 sixth, and finishing his round with a 7-iron into 8 feet on the 18th.

The conditions must have looked familiar. Allenby won at Riviera in 2001 by making short work of a six-man playoff, hitting a 3-wood from 225 through a cold rain into 5 feet for birdie.

“Back then, I wasn’t playing that well coming into here, and the same deal now,” Allenby said.

Two-time defending champion Mike Weir was among the leaders until the wind fooled him on the par-4 13th.

Strange shoots 74 in Champions Tour debut

NAPLES, Fla. – Curtis Strange got off to a slow start in his Champions Tour debut, shooting a 2-over 74 on Friday to fall eight strokes behind first-round leaders R.W. Eaks and Mike McCullough in the ACE Group Classic.

Strange had four birdies, four bogeys and a double bogey. The two-time U.S. Open champion hit his second shot into the water on the final hole, but got up and down for a bogey. He birdied No. 13 and chipped in for a birdie on No. 14.

“There were some anxious moments because you want to play for so many, including yourself,” Strange said. “But you also know that there are so many unknowns out there. All of those things combined make you uneasy at times.”

A television analyst for most of the past eight seasons, Strange won 17 PGA Tour titles, highlighted by his 1988 and 1989 U.S. Open victories. He also captained the 2002 U.S. Ryder Cup team.

“You can hit balls all you want or practice all you want, but where you really find out what you need to work on is when you go play a competitive round,” he said.

The 51-year-old Eaks, a three-time winner on the Nationwide Tour, birdied the last three holes on the TwinEagles course. “I kind of grip it and rip it,” Eaks said.

Hale Irwin, coming off a victory in Hawaii, opened with a 67, and Ron Streck, Wayne Levi, Jim Thorpe, Jerry Pate and Leonard Thompson had 68s.

The 59-year-old Irwin, a two-time winner in the tournament, is fighting a cold.

“It doesn’t matter because I’m there,” Irwin said. “I’m OK. I’ve got that solid round under my belt. It wasn’t one of those stressful, straining kind of rounds.”

Defending champion Craig Stadler shot a 73.

Defending champ Thongchai leads Malaysian Open

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Defending champion Thongchai Jaidee of Thailand shot a 6-under 66 on Friday to take a two-stroke lead in the Malaysian Open.

Thongchai, the first Thai winner on the European tour, had a 14-under 130 total on the Saujana Golf and Country Club course.

Denmark’s Thomas Bjorn (64) was second at 12 under, followed by Sweden’s Henrik Stenson (64) and Thailand’s Prom Meesawat (65) at 11 under. Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez (67) was 9 under, and Ireland’s Padraig Harrington (66) was 7 under.