Tommy Fleetwood shares the lead in the Abu Dhabi Championship with Aaron Ray at the halfway point

Tommy Fleetwood maintained his good form recently by scoring 66 points under par to share the lead after two rounds of the Abu Dhabi Championship with his English teammate Aaron Ray.

World number 30 Ray, who fired his second shot from 218 yards to score a rare albatross, will enter the weekend alongside Fleetwood on 14 under par.

They are two shots behind South Africa’s Richard Stern, England’s Andy Sullivan and Denmark’s Nicolai Hougaard at Yas Links.

Shane Lowry, who was joint overnight leader with Fleetwood, was back on track after a 69, while Rory McIlroy’s second straight 68 put him eight points back.

Fleetwood, who won the event in 2017 and 2018, opened with three straight birdies and despite a bogey on the 15th that cost him the outright lead he was in good spirits.

“It was a really good day. I got off to the perfect start. Birdie, birdie, birdie,” said Fleetwood, who won the season-ending PGA Tour Championship in September before helping Europe win the Ryder Cup in New York.

“That was good, especially when you’ve had a good round the day before. They always say it’s hard to follow up a good round with another good round, or a low round with another.

“A good start was really important. I did a really good job. I hit a lot of good shots but a few times today it pushed things into the rough and we read the lies really well.

“I felt like we did a great job controlling the ball out of the park, which was really fun. I feel like I got my composure going again. Six under par was a very good result.”

The Abu Dhabi Championship is the first of two end-of-season playoff tournaments on the DP World Tour, with the top 70 players competing this week and the top 50 qualifying for next week’s final in Dubai.

With a total of 9,000 points to be shared between players this week (1,500 for the winner) and another 12,000 points next week (2,000 for the winner), the Harry Vardon Cup is up for grabs.

McIlroy is in pole position to win the title of the season for the seventh time – one title shy of Colin Montgomerie’s record of eight titles.

The Northern Irishman leads the Race to Dubai standings by just under 500 points over Marco Ping, the Englishman who has won three times on the Tour this year.

Penge has a one-shot lead over McIlroy in Abu Dhabi, having followed up his opening 67 with a 68 to sit on nine under.

Tyrrell Hatton, who is another 800 points behind Peng, also has a chance to win the overall title, although he is in sixth place after two rounds.

Fleetwood is about 2,800 points behind McIlroy, so to have any chance of overall victory, he will need to win both events and hope his Ryder Cup teammate stumbles.