Superstitions, jokesters keep the game fun

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AVONDALE, La. — Louis Oosthuizen and Charl Schwartzel birdied six of their final eight holes Saturday to shoot a 9-under 63 and take a one-shot lead at 19-under 197 into the final round of the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. RELATED: Leaderboard | Doug Ghim, Justin Suh bounce back to get in contention at the Zurich Classic The South African tandem birdied the par-3 17th with Oosthuizen’s 33-foot putt and Oosthuizen missed an eagle on the par-5 18th by 4 inches before tapping in for the lead while wearing a somewhat disgusted look because of his narrowly missed previous putt from nearly 17 feet. Oosthuizen then allowed for a smile while fist-bumping Schwartzel in acknowledgment of a successful round in a best-ball format that included nine birdies — five by Schwartzel and four by Oosthuizen in the PGA TOUR’s lone regular-season team event. Schwartzel got the pair going when he birdied No. 4 with a nearly 58-foot putt. The tournament will close with an alternate-shot round. “It’s going to be tough tomorrow,” Oosthuizen said. “Anyone within four shots of the lead has got a chance with the format that it is tomorrow. … The way the wind is the whole week, I think the golf course plays very tough, especially in alternate-shot.” In all, 17 teams were no more than four strokes back. Australians Marc Leishman and Cameron Smith also shot a 63 to move into a tie for second at 18 under with Cameron Champ and Tony Finau, who shot a 67 after Finau’s tap-in birdie. “Cam is playing great, putting great. I’m feeling a lot better over the ball today than I did the first two rounds,” Leishman said. “If I can play good, Cam keeps doing what he’s doing, I think we’ve got a good chance.” Tied for fourth at 17 under were the teams of Bubba Watson and Scottie Scheffler, and Norwegians Viktor Hovland and Kris Ventura, who’d shared the lead after the first and second rounds. Ryan Palmer and Spaniard Jon Rahm, the defending champs from 2019, shot a third-round 65 to remain in contention at 15 under and tied for ninth with nine other teams. Saturday’s action included some exceptional shots by players further back in the field, including Sam Ryder’s double-eagle from 206 yards on the par-5 second hole and Wyndham Clark’s 106-yard approach from the muddy edge of a water hazard on 16. Clark stood in the water in bare feet with his pants rolled up and splattered virtually all of himself with mud as he sent his ball to the edge of the green, about 15 feet from the hole, from where he made par. Clark and teammate Erik van Rooyen were among the teams at 15 under. Ryder and Doc Redman, who shot a third-round 66, were tied for 19th at 13 under.

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Dylan Frittelli took something of a busman’s holiday last week. The personable South African didn’t make the field of 64 for the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. Even so, Frittelli still found himself inside the ropes during the first two days of competition at Austin Country Club. But Frittelli had traded his golf clubs in for a microphone so he could call the action for PGA TOUR LIVE. “It was a fun, fun gig, just being out there in the moment and seeing everything,” he says. Frittelli worked the first-round match between Jordan Spieth and Keegan Bradley on Wednesday, as well as Thursday’s tilt that pitted Sergio Garcia against Collin Morikawa. He kept the weekend open to prepare for this week’s Valero Texas Open. After all, playing, not commentating on, the PGA TOUR is Frittelli’s regular job. The 31-year-old has done well at his chosen profession, too, winning the 2019 John Deere Classic and making the FedExCup Playoffs each of the last three seasons. But Frittelli wants to expand his media footprint. He has done some studio work at events in South Africa, as well as at a professional soccer game in Austin, Texas, where he went to college and now makes his home. He knows on-course reporting is the logical starting point, though, and the opportunity presented itself last week. “I’m just getting my feet wet,” explains Frittelli, who is also starting a podcast. “I obviously am focused on playing and I want to play for another 10, maybe 15 years. Who knows, but ideally, I’d just like to give it a go and see if I enjoy it. … “It’s interesting. Obviously, I have the expertise to know what I’m talking about and having a foreign accent helps, too. But right now, it’s just a little thing to get on my resume and my CV, if I ever want to go into it.” Frittelli says he showed up “pretty green” on Wednesday of last week. In fact, he didn’t even think to bring a yardage book because he knows Austin Country Club so well. But he has insight on the players from competing against them regularly, and he says he learned a lot from Colin Swatton, a PGA TOUR LIVE mainstay who once caddied for Jason Day. “You just give a little bit of color,” says Frittelli, who called Spieth’s shots while Swatton handled Bradley. “You tell them what the lie is like. You tell them what things you’d be looking for as a player, any special features on the green or wind conditions or maybe the lie’s a little iffy.” Frittelli says it was easy to converse with the hosts. But it was a “very multitasking-based skill” to learn how to artfully finish a thought and hand it back to the studio when a producer was counting down to a break in his ear. He was careful with the microphone — he had to toggle between one line that connected him with the producer and the other one that was live. “I was very pedantic about that,” Frittelli says. “You don’t want to leave it on and then you start having a conversation, but you get used to it eventually.” The Spieth-Bradley match was a comfortable one for Frittelli to call in his debut. Spieth was a freshman at Texas in 2012 when Frittelli was a senior. The South African made the winning putt that year when the Longhorns beat Alabama for the NCAA title, ending a 40-year drought. Frittelli didn’t get a chance to tell Spieth that he’d be on the call, though. He had planned to go to the range and give caddie Michael Greller the head’s up but “I think it was a bit of a surprise,” he says. When Spieth drove into a hazard on the ninth hole, Frittelli could see a ball in a good lie on a rock face. So, he picked his way about 50 feet down the hillside to see if it belonged to his former teammate. Turns out, it didn’t. “I’d never been down there before, but I knew that that cliff was pretty stable,” Frittelli says, noting that the LIVE cameras caught the South African’s descent. “I had a couple of people screenshot it and send it to me.” Frittelli’s next venture, which is called the “On Tour” podcast, will launch within a month. He is working on the project with Erik Anders Lang and randomgolfclub.com. Lang is the host and director for SkratchTV’s documentary series “Adventures in Golf.” Frittelli already has done interviews with several players for the podcast, and he hopes to collect more this week in San Antonio. He’s not sure who will be the first guest yet, but he wants to make sure the podcast launches with a “bit of a splash.” While golf is his priority right now, Frittelli is excited about his new endeavors. He’s building toward the future, and he likes to keep busy. “I don’t want to be to a point where either I’ve fallen off TOUR or chose to stop playing on TOUR and then go, what am I going to do now and sit around for a year or two, trying to figure it out,” Frittelli says. “I would rather have a couple different avenues that I can go into straightaway because I don’t like just sitting around doing nothing.”

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