Special to PGATOUR.com

SAN DIEGO -- Jesper Parnevik still shakes his head and smiles at the way it happened. How he got his golf game black in virtually the blink of an eye.

Parnevik hadn't been happy with his game for about the past three seasons, and when he stepped onto the driving range to try a new driver on the Monday of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, he wasn't looking for a cure, just a Band-Aid.

Then the Swede striped one ball exactly the way he wanted to with that new Titleist driver, and when he did it again on the next try, that was it. He'd found whatever it was he was looking for.

"That one swing everything clicked," Parnevik said. "It was amazing."

Parnevik tied for second last week, and he's kept up the momentum through two rounds of the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines. Following a 67 that was the best score on the South Course in the first round, Parnevik answered with another 67 on the short and soft North Course.

His seventh round in the 60s this season put Parnevik into a tie for second with South African Tim Clark at 10-under 134, two shots behind leader Brandt Jobe, who shot 67 on the South Course.

"That's how weird this game is," Parnevik said. "You can go from pretty much having no clue and searching really hard where the ball is going to go, to where I just made two swings and I feel like I've got it now."

Parnevik has already made 13 birdies in two days at the Buick. In the second round, he suffered a bogey on the 11th hole (his second), but he reeled off three straight birdies on Nos. 14-16, and he made three more on the back to close with a 33.

The North Course plays shorter, Parnevik allowed, but that doesn't mean he didn't have to work just as hard.

"You can get messed up on the North Course if you're not careful," he said. "Where the pins are, there can be some pretty wicked putts. You can play 5 or 6 feet of break in a 10-foot putt.

"The tough thing is the course is so soft, when you're hitting wedges into so many of the greens, the ball is spinning back off the green most of the time. "If you had told me after two days I would be 10-under, I would have taken it, let's put it that way."

Parnevik's last few years on TOUR have been as unorthodox as his approach to life. A couple of seasons ago on the West Coast Swing he vowed to play until he either got better or dropped from exhaustion. Last season, he took two entire months off after he didn't post a top-10 in the first six months of the year.

Parnevik finished 118th on the money list in 2003, 40th the next season and then plummeted to 109th last year. Long practice sessions seemed to be of no use -- "The more I practiced the worse I got," he said -- and he finally decided last summer to shut himself down.

Parnevik went to Sweden with his wife and four kids and spent two months enjoying being away from the game.

"I said the heck with it, I'm going to surrender," Parnevik said. "And I gave in. The game got me. I was trying so hard, but didn't win. I gave up pretty much -- not gave up, but I decided I was going to take a break and see what happens."

As badly as it pained him, Parnevik even skipped the British Open at St. Andrews.

"The one (bad) part was the British Open, I would say, because that's a tournament I love to play. Still, I just felt I probably was going to go there and be frustrated for a couple of days, probably go home."

Parnevik earned two top-10s after his vacation, and the rest now seems to be paying off this year. He's got an entirely new outlook, including the eye for his wardrobe. He's gone from wacky color combinations to basic black, thanks to being blown away by the Johnny Cash movie Walk the Line.

"We'll see how long it works," said Parnevik, who wore black pants and a black sweater over his pink shirt in the second round at Torrey Pines.

"I had those pink pants a few years ago and that made me a few million. So hopefully this is going to do the same thing. That was a great movie. I thought it was probably one of the best movies I've seen."