PALM HARBOR, Fla. — Jim Furyk has gone 58 tournaments over 32 months without winning on the PGA Tour. That doesn’t make the final round of the Transitions Championship any more important than it would have been in good times.
“It’s not really ‘I want to show you’ or anything like that,” Furyk said Saturday after shooting a 4-under-par 67 to open a three-shot lead. “It’s more that I just want to win a golf tournament.”
Furyk has heard one question — “What has kept you from winning?” — far too often since his victory in the 2007 Canadian Open. With a round as flawless as the spring weather in Florida, he put himself in great position to answer it. He made consecutive birdies early on the back nine and kept bogeys off his card for his first 54-hole lead in nearly three years.
Pressure? No more than usual.
“It’s not really a monkey- off-my-back perspective or ‘Boy, I can’t wait to not answer that question again,’ ” Furyk said. “It’s just that I want to go out and win. That’s what we play golf for. That’s what I practice hard for. And I haven’t been able to do that in over 2 1/2 years.
“It’s disappointing, because I work pretty hard at it.”
Furyk was at 11-under 202 with a strong group of contenders behind him.
Defending champion Retief Goosen birdied the last hole of a roller-coaster round that gave him a 1-under 70, part of a four-way tie for second. The others at 8-under 205 were two past champions at Innisbrook — K.J. Choi (67) and Carl Pettersson (70) — and Bubba Watson, who has never won on tour. He scrambled for a 70.
Padraig Harrington, a three- time major champion who hasn’t won since the 2008 PGA Championship, went 14 holes without a birdie to fall out of the lead, then dropped another shot on the 18th hole for a 72 that left him four shots behind.
Oosthuizen out front.
Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa shot a 9-under 64 to take a two- stroke lead over Rhys Davies of Wales after the third round of the Trophee Hassan II in Rabat, Morocco.
Oosthuizen had five birdies on the front nine and five more on the back to go with a single bogey on No. 17. Overnight leader Davies had seven birdies in his round of 68.
