Bermuda have slipped six places into 33rd after the second day of the World Amateur Team Championships in Karuizawa, Japan.

Playing yesterday on the par-71 Oshitate layout at Karuizawa 72 Golf East, Bermuda returned an even-par 142, with Jarryd Dillas again leading the way.

The former Bermuda Amateur Stroke Play champion had a second successive one-under-par round, this time a 70, while Will Haddrell returned a 72 to record an official score for Bermuda for the first time in the championships. Mark Phillips slipped away after his first round of 71 on the Iriyama Course by returning a nine-over 80 on Oshitate.

Despite dropping off the pace, Bermuda have the distinction of playing in the same course rota as the ultimate champions owing to their positioning in the top half of the 67-country field. They will play Oshitate today and Iriyama tomorrow.

Their placing could have been so much better had form from their front nine been sustained. The trio had improved Bermuda’s overall score from two under to seven under, which placed them in a vertigo-inducing joint tenth, before the weather took a turn for the worse, with play ultimately suspended for almost an hour.

The wheels had virtually come off the round, though, before Haddrell and Phillips were forced off — Dillas had already completed his round. Haddrell, who was on the 9th green, his eighteenth, when play was interrupted, got up and down for par, but Phillips finished his round with three successive bogeys.

“The team has mixed emotions tonight,” Chris Brough, the non-playing captain, said. “On the one hand, we believe that our score of 244 is the best ever for a Bermuda team after two rounds and we have achieved our initial goal of being in the top half of the field at the halfway point.

“Those feelings are tempered after the excitement of seeing Bermuda on the leaderboard in tied tenth at seven under early in the round today and letting that position slip.

“We are in the same half of the draw as the leaders and the team are looking forward to getting back out early tomorrow, getting off to another quick start and carrying that momentum through the entire round.”

Undoubtedly the star of the show was Dillas, who is joint 57th out of 200 in the individual race at two under par. Starting his round on the 10th hole, as did his team-mates, Dillas made an immediate birdie and followed up with another at the 532-yard par-five 13th.

His first bogey came on the shortest hole of the course, the par-three 17th of 149 yards and then he made birdie on the longest — an outrageous par-six 18th that carries a prodigious 787 yards.

His play cooled off as the weather closed in, but a birdie on the 475-yard par-four 7th against bogeys on the 3rd and 9th kept his round together.

“I think 142 is the best team score Bermuda has ever posted at the WATC, so to do it twice is a great achievement by this team,” said Dillas, who is playing in his sixth world championships.

“That being said, we all feel that we could have been better and so we’re looking to push on over the final two days to complete Bermuda’s best-ever finish.”

Haddrell endured the most fluctuation in his round after making such a bright start. He showed great promise with back-to-back birdies on the 11th and 12th, and then produced another on the 15th, thus gaining a stroke to par on each of the three conventional distances.

Then his round turned pear-shaped, with bogeys on four of his next eight holes before the bleeding was stopped with a birdie at the 193-yard par-three 6th.

For Phillips, it was a day to forget after his successes on Iriyama 24 hours earlier. He went without a birdie throughout but at least over his first nine, he had bogeys on only the par-four 11th and that monstrous 18th.

But the turn was not his friend, with that seven on 18 the prelude to two bogeys and a double bogey, on the 472-yard par-three 3rd. Having safely negotiated the next three holes, which included two par-threes, Phillips finished poorly and now faces a second successive round on a layout that has not been too kind to him.

Haddrell is joint 99th at two over par, while Phillips, six strokes farther adrift, is joint 138th. “After a pretty hot start yesterday, I struggled today to get things going,” Phillips said. “Hopefully tomorrow I can get things going and post a good score.”

In the nosebleed section of the tournament, Argentina passed Canada and took the second-round lead, with a five-under 66 from Jaime López Rivarola and a four-under 67 from Alejandro Tosti on Oshitate.

The Argentinians, who began the day in fourth position, hold a one-stroke lead over Sweden, Switzerland and the United States at 18-under 268, which ties for the second-lowest 36-hole total in championship history. Canada, who shared the lead after the first round, lost four strokes in the last three holes to hold fifth place at 270.

John Rahm, of Spain, shot the low round of the championship, a seven-under 64 at Oshitate and was joined by Australia’s Lucas Herbert, who had an eight-under 64 at Iriyama. But they still have ground to make up on Markus Hinholt, the Swede, who holds a two-stroke in the individual race after 66 to his first-round 65.

The World Amateur Team Championships is a biennial international amateur competition conducted by the International Golf Federation, which comprises 137 national governing bodies in 131 countries.

The competition, which is being held for the 26th time, is rotated among three geographic zones: Asia-Pacific, Americas and Europe-Africa.

The women played their tournament last week over the same courses, with Australia taking the team title for the Espirito Santo Trophy. The men are playing for the Eisenhower Trophy.