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Here are nine tidbits from the third round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard that gamers can use tomorrow, this weekend or down the road. The Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando, Florida, plays 7,419 yards (par 72). The Final Group Henrik Stenson opened with a 64 and hasn’t looked back. After sharing the 36-hole lead with Bryson DeChambeau, his lead is one (-12, 204) as he looks to claim his first title at Bay Hill. History is not in his corner as the only European to lift the title in 39 previous events was Martin Laird in 2011. Stenson had the 54-hole lead in 2015 but couldn’t hold off Matt Every as he finished second. His worst final round score in his last five Sundays at Bay Hill is 71. … DeChambeau hasn’t finished outside the top five in his last four tournaments where he’s been tied or one back of the 36-hole lead so I wouldn’t expect him to fade tomorrow. He said his WD last week was due to not getting enough rest. After having the last tee time Saturday and playing in the last group tomorrow, I would suggest he would be fresh and ready to go. Rising Rory With only four bogeys and a double this week, it looks like Rory McIlroy is turning up the heat with the Masters right around the corner. His ball-striking came to life on Saturday but it continues to be the flatstick that keeps his momentum rolling. He’s second this week in Strokes Gained: Putting on lightning-fast TifEagle greens. He’s closed the last three years 70, 65 and 69 last year so I’m expecting something in that neighborhood tomorrow. His 67 is his lowest round of the year in the States and only trails by two. Rose Blooming Justin Rose leads the field with 19 birdies and six of those were circled on Saturday against just one bogey as he posted 67. Rose has also been close here before as he shared the 36-hole lead in 2013 before finishing second to Tiger Woods. Gamers will be expecting a big finish tomorrow after not being able to close the deal from the final group last week at Valspar. He played with and beat Woods by two shots Saturday to move up 13 spots to T4. #Trending. Been There, Done That Speaking of Woods, the eight-time champion needed a low one Saturday to get back into the fight. His 69 was solid but finds him five shots off Stenson’s lead. He’ll need to equal or match his lowest closing round, 66, tomorrow to have any kind of a chance. He won’t get any help from the weather, as it’s forecasted to be perfect again. It’s also unlikely that ALL of the premium players in front of him will fall apart. I’m interested to see if he can put the pedal to the metal when he knows that’s what it’s going to take to win. Running Down a Dream There are only two players in the top 10 that haven’t won on TOUR, rookie Talor Gooch (T6) and Bud Cauley (T10). Since 1995, the only two winners to earn their maiden win on TOUR at this event have been Paul Goydos (1996) and Matt Every (2014). The odds aren’t stacked in their favor, especially with the household names in front of them on the leaderboard, but I’m interested to see how they handle the big stage. Rickie Don’t Lose That Number After sitting just one shot off Stenson’s lead with two holes to play, Rickie Fowler played the final two holes 3-over-par. He’ll start four shots back (T6) as he looks to add only his second top-10 finish at Bay Hill in seven events. Gamers don’t need to be reminded that his only other top 10 in five starts this year was T4 at the Sentry Tournament of Champions. Repeat After Me Hey look, another very solid round from Ryan Moore! He backed up his Friday 67 with his lowest round in this event on Saturday in seven tries with 69. Of his previous six Sunday rounds at Bay Hill the best of the bunch is 70. It’s also the only one in red figures. His ball-striking suggests he could improve on that number tomorrow. Moving Day The warmer temperatures helped the early guys get off to flying starts. John Huh has never MC at Bay Hill but he’s also never collected a check for better than T27. He’ll have a chance tomorrow after his 66 moved him up 48 spots to T18. He has just as many rounds in the 80s on Sunday as he does under par (two each) at Bay Hill. … Austin Cook shared the low round of the day with Huh and also shared the biggest jump, 48 spots. After making four birdies in the first two rounds he circled eight on Saturday, confirming he’s a quick study in his first event at Bay Hill. … Jason Day’s ailment(s) from Friday didn’t carry over on to his scorecard Saturday as his 67 vaulted him to T18 as well. The 2016 wire-to-wire champion is probably too far behind to win but another low one will reward investors in every format. Moving Day: Wrong Way 2016 U.S. Amateur champ Curtis Luck reinforced how difficult Bay Hill can be for the youngsters. He sat T11 after 71-68 but 74 in Round 3 knocked him down 24 spots to T35. Astute gamers know this is only his 11th start on TOUR as a pro and will remember he was T5 at the Quicken Loans National and T20 at The Greenbrier last summer. … Luke List gave back all of the ground he made up with Friday’s 67 with 74 on Saturday to knock him out of the top 10. He’s currently T28 but T26 is his worst payday in his last five. I’d expect a positive reaction tomorrow. Study Hall Patrick Reed has rinsed five balls in the drink this week. He’s also made 18 birdies and sits T10. … Sam Horsfield (68), Brian Stuard (68) and Graeme McDowell (69) signed for the only bogey-free rounds of the day. One of those is not like the others. Round 3 played under par at 71.260, by far the easiest of the week. … Tweet of the Day
Viktor Hovland's 12-foot birdie putt to win the Mayakoba Golf Classic presented by UNIFIN, the 12th and final event of the fall, moved him up to third in the FedExCup and put a bow on a wildly entertaining fall season. The fall also provided a lot of answers. We know whose biohacking has worked. (Take a bow, Bryson DeChambeau.) We know who won't stop knocking on the door. (Make room for Maui-bound Stewart Cink, Brian Gay, Jason Kokrak, Martin Laird, Carlos Ortiz, Robert Streb and - deep breath - Hudson Swafford.) We were entertained, again, by Tiger and Phil. Woods made a career-high 10 at the 12th hole at the Masters - then erased most of that mess with five birdies in his last six holes. Mickelson won the Dominion Energy Charity Classic for his second victory in as many starts on PGA TOUR Champions, then carried Charles Barkley on his back for 18 holes. We saw three new courses, with Houston's iconic Memorial Park in it for the long haul. THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK and ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP @ SHERWOOD were stopgaps. Fittingly, there were new course records at all three. Xander Schauffele shot 8-under 64 at Shadow Creek; Richy Werenski 11-under 61 at Sherwood; Hideki Matsuyama 7-under 63 at Memorial Park. (Justin Thomas also shot 5-under 65 at the Winged Foot U.S. Open.) None of them won. Harry Higgs (Safeway Open), Scott Harrington (Sanderson Farms Championship) and Brendan Steele (Mayakoba Golf Classic) each made an albatross. None of them won, either. Korn Ferry Tour pro Will Zalatoris made a hole-in-one at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, then earned Special Temporary Membership on TOUR, a different sort of victory. We witnessed brawn (DeChambeau at the U.S. Open; Dustin Johnson at the Masters), and brains (three 40-something winners). We saw a salute to the golden oldies (Fred Funk, 64, made the cut at the Bermuda Championship despite averaging less than 245 yards off the tee). Ageless Bernhard Langer, 63, became the oldest to make the Masters cut. Playing with DeChambeau on Sunday at Augusta, the PGA TOUR Champions star hit hybrids and 3-woods into most of the par 4s; DeChambeau, meanwhile, scraped the clouds with his tee shots and drove the third green. And Bernie beat Bryson 71-73. Surprising? Certainly. The fall was that. Cink, 47, won the Safeway Open, breaking a win drought of 4,074 days since the 2009 Open Championship. He is currently fourth in the FedExCup. Last season he was 144th. Gay, 48, won the Bermuda Championship for his first title in over seven years. Kokrak made 26 birdies and won THE CJ CUP @ SHADOW CREEK for his first win at 35. Because it's like they say: If at first you don't succeed, wait until your 233rd career start. Laird won a playoff over Austin Cook and Matthew Wolff at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open, his first trophy since the 2013 Valero Texas Open. Swafford (Corales Punta Cana Resort & Club Championship) hadn't won since the 2017 The American Express, and Sergio Garcia, 40, putted with his eyes wide shut to steady his stroke at the Sanderson Farms Championship. It was his first victory on TOUR since the 2017 Masters, and he pointed to the sky and blinked back tears while remembering his two uncles who had died from the coronavirus. "It's hard," Garcia said, which also described so much of 2020. Ortiz broke through at the Vivint Houston Open in his 118th career TOUR start, marking his first victory of any kind since his three-win season on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2014. Then he broke down. Streb won The RSM Classic six years after winning the 2014 RSM, a stretch of 165 starts. The fall wasn't entirely about winning; Matthew Wolff was loading up on seconds long before Thanksgiving. The runner-up to DeChambeau at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, Wolff was runner-up to DeChambeau again at the U.S. Open, and in his very next start lost a playoff (Laird, Austin Cook) to finish T2 at the Shriners. Yep, three near-misses in 10 starts. He's ninth in the FedExCup. That's a solid fall; Wolff might even make the season-ending TOUR Championship at East Lake, Sept. 2-5, 2021. If he does, he'll likely run into No. 1 Johnson. Wait. Him again? Yep, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The winner of last season's points race is in pole position yet again. That's because Johnson shot 20 under at Augusta to break the Masters scoring record (Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth) by two. He also finished T2 at the Vivint Houston Open, and T6 at the U.S. Open. Any questions? Johnson is 252 points ahead of No. 2 DeChambeau, who along with Mickelson and Adam Scott experimented with extra-long driver shafts. Thomas revealed a grudge match with Charlie Woods, 11, as Justin and dad Mike, and Tiger and son Charlie, anticipate their first-ever appearance at the PNC Championship in Orlando later this month. Said Thomas, "We’ll have that like inner tournament within a tournament." That was the fall - a tournament within a tournament. Because as great as it was, it was just a taste of 2021, when Dustin and Justin, Viktor and Xander, will return with the rest of them. Happy holidays and see you in Maui for the Sentry Tournament of Champions, Jan. 7-10.
PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico — Danny Lee felt like he could make everything Friday, and for the longest time he did. Already at 10-under par through 13 holes, Lee started thinking about a sub-60 round when he hit a downhill birdie putt too hard and wound up three-putting for bogey. Four pars later, he had to settle for a 9-under 62 and a one-shot lead in the Mayakoba Golf Classic. “Definitely, it was in my head, 59 or 58,” Lee said. “I never shot that score out on the PGA TOUR before, so I really wanted to make that happen. On 14, I had a 3% downhill, less than 15-footer for birdie. Just one of those days I felt like I can make anything. I just gave a little too much extra and hit it through the break and missed the next one coming back. “I was a little bit bummed out on that one,” he said. “But still, 9 under is a great start.” Lee had a one-shot lead over Adam Long and Brendon Todd, who resurrected his career two weeks ago with a win in the Bermuda Championship. The first round started a day late because of heavy rains — more than 9 inches since Monday — that left El Camaleon flooded and forced a washout Thursday. The second round was scheduled for Saturday, and because of limited daylight in November, the tournament will not end until Monday. Lee shot 29 on the front nine, including a five-hole stretch he played in 6 under. The 62 matched his career-best round on the PGA TOUR, a 62 he shot in the third round of the 2015 John Deere Classic. Long and Todd already have won this year — Long at the Desert Classic in January when he beat Phil Mickelson, and Todd in a big surprise in Bermuda. “I proved in Bermuda that I can kind of get into that mentality where I can go low again, and I basically started the day and said, `Let’s try and birdie every hole.’ I know it’s going to be soft and there’s going to be birdies out there.” He had four birdies on each side against no bogeys on the rain-softened course. Defending champion Matt Kuchar had a pair of double bogeys in his round of 69 that left him seven shots behind. Lee’s only PGA TOUR victory was four years ago at the Greenbrier. He is coming off a strong Asian swing, with a runner-up finish to Justin Thomas at the CJ Cup in South Korea, and a tie for 10th in Japan, where Tiger Woods won his 82nd career PGA TOUR title. He was runner-up to Kuchar a year ago, and he tied for third at Mayakoba in 2015. “Something about this course that just suits my eye very well,” Lee said. “I can read the breaks very well and I putted very well today.” Past champion Graeme McDowell was among those at 66, along with Abraham Ancer of Mexico.
