Tom Watson knows all about playing in the wind, and he has five British Open titles to prove it.
When the flags finally started flapping at Whistling Straits on Saturday, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Watson stayed at the top of the U.S. Senior Open leaderboard in Haven, Wis.
The course that looks more like a potential British Open site than a slice of central Wisconsin found its signature windy “whistle” on Saturday, and Watson handled it better than the players trying to chase him down.
“I’ve been pretty good at that over my career,” Watson said. “So the conditions here were kind of like that today.”
On a day when only eight players scored under par, Watson shot a 1-over-par 73 to carry a 3-shot lead into the final round today. Watson is 7-under for the tournament, and his closest pursuer is Loren Roberts at 4-under. John Ross, Sam Torrance and Vicente Fernandez are tied at 3-under.
After relatively docile conditions through the first two rounds, players had to contend with winds that blew at an estimated 10 to 20 mph and got stronger throughout the day. Even harder winds are forecast for today’s final round – an advantage, perhaps, for Watson.
“We all know what he can do in the wind,” Roberts said. “He’s a great ball striker.”
But even Watson didn’t have it easy Saturday.
Watson frittered away his early lead, shooting 3-over-par on the front nine and dropping into a tie with Roberts. But Watson recovered on the back nine, and regained the three-shot lead he held going into Saturday when Roberts made a double bogey on the par-3 17th.
“Even though I didn’t hit the ball very well, it was a very good round of golf,” Watson said.
Watson’s struggles began when he missed an 8-foot putt for par on the first hole. Watson birdied the fifth hole, but bogeyed Nos. 6, 8 and 9 to leave the front nine in a tie with Roberts at 5-under.
Watson birdied the 10th as Roberts made bogey, but Roberts birdied the 11th and caught Watson to tie for the lead again on the par-4 14th. Roberts sank a long birdie putt, then watched as Watson missed his own 6-foot putt for birdie.
Roberts hit his second shot on the par-5 16th into the rough. He recovered to make par, but Watson made a 15-foot birdie putt to retake the lead at 7-under.
PGA Tour: Tiger Woods displayed his full repertoire of near-miss reactions: the putter flip, the 360-degree spin with head to the sky, the drop to his knees, and head bowed with hands on knees.
His mammoth gallery settled on just one way to react: the very loud moan.
That’s what happens when the host of the Bethesda, Md., tournament has six birdie putts that stop less than a foot from the hole and two more that settle less than 2 feet away.
Woods’ 69 on Saturday at the AT&T National looked boring on the surface – 15 pars and only two birdies – but the sights and sounds told the story of a round that was inches away from being something spectacular.
“I turned a 63 or 64 into a 69 very smoothly,” Woods said.
For Woods to win the inaugural version of his own PGA Tour event, he’ll have to stage the biggest final-day comeback of his pro career. He’s never won when trailing by more than five strokes after the third round, but he’s currently at 2-under for the tournament – seven shots behind leader Stuart Appleby.
“It’s frustrating, it really is,” Woods said. “There’s no denying that. When you hit good putts and you think they are looking dead center, they kind of wander left or right, it is frustrating. And that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Many groups behind the Woods hoopla, Stuart Appleby roller-coastered his way to a two-stroke lead. The Aussie, playing with a hairline crack in his driver, made five birdies and three bogeys in a 2-under round of 68 for a 201 total, putting him in position to win the event that bears the name of his good friend and neighbor in Orlando, Fla.
Second-place K.J. Choi is two strokes off the lead. Choi trailed Appleby by five following a bogey at the 14th, but birdied the next three holes to shoot a 70 on a hot and humid afternoon at Congressional Country Club.
European Tour: Soren Hansen of Denmark birdied four of the last five holes to shoot a 7-under 63 for a two- stroke lead in the third round of the European Open in Straffan, Ireland.
Hansen has a 10-under 200 total, two strokes ahead of Robert Rock, who shot 66.
