Jordan Smith recovers from early bogey to take two shot lead at Porsche Open

Englishman Jordan Smith will take a two-shot lead into the weekend at the Porsche Open in Hamburg.

The 29 year old did well to recover from an early bogey to rack up an impressive five birdies to leave himself six under overnight.

He will be expecting to come under pressure from Victor Perez, who is two shots behind, and Julien Brun, Joakim Lagergren and Niklas Norgaard Moller who are a further shot back.

Chippenham-born Smith claimed his maiden DP World Tour title in 2017 at the same event, and now sits 13th in the tour rankings.

"I have really good memories of most of the holes around here," said Smith.

"Winning back then, even though it was five years ago, I still remember a lot of it.

"I'm looking forward to continuing the good stuff and seeing how the weekend goes."

Frenchman Perez birdied two of his last three holes to get himself back in contention after he appeared to have lost all momentum earlier on.

It comes after a win at the Dutch Open last week and he believes it's important to hold onto that form for as long as he can.

"I'm just trying to ride it as much as possible," he said. "I think we try to use those moments as players.

"When things go your way you hit shots and it feels easy, you try not to play quickly, which is not a bad thing for me, and you just get on with it.

"There's a lot of golf left. It's a long weekend, I think it's supposed to be the same weather, nice and not very windy. I expect the Tour to set the course as difficult as they can to control the score.

"I'm very pleased again. I thought the course played very difficult. The pins were harder than yesterday, there was less wind but sometimes it's still just as difficult."