LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England – The ball tumbled over the edge of a pot bunker and appeared to put Adam Scott in the worst spot he had been all day at the British Open.
All he saw was opportunity.
From the wet sand right of the 17th green, Scott had to clear two more pot bunkers to reach the green, with the flag only five paces from the edge. Scott was thinking about birdie, not trying to save par, so he confidently told caddie Steve Williams, “I can handle this.”
The shot came out pure, trickled past the cup and settled a foot away.
The more relevant questions are one round away.
Can he handle a four-shot lead, knowing this is a year when no lead appears safe? Can he handle a leaderboard with four major champions among the top six names, including Tiger Woods? Can he handle the wind that is expected to finally arrive at Royal Lytham & St. Annes today?
“I’m just happy to be in this position,” Scott said after his round Saturday. “To be honest, I’m really excited about tomorrow.”
Scott has never had a better chance to end his long wait for a major – and he owes much of that to his long putter. He stayed in the game early with two key par saves, pulled away with three birdies around the turn and was solid at the end for a 2-under 68 in the third round and a four-shot lead over Graeme McDowell and Brandt Snedeker.
It’s the fourth time in the last nine majors that a player had a four-shot lead with one round to go. Rory McIlroy at the 2011 Masters is the only player who didn’t win. Scott has been so steady all week that he has put himself in position to become only the fourth Open champion with four rounds in the 60s.
“It was all pretty solid stuff, considering the circumstances and how much trouble there is on this golf course,” said Scott, who is at 11-under 199. He will play in the final group today with McDowell, who had a 67 to get into the final group for the second straight time at a major.
Snedeker, who went from a one-shot lead to a six-shot deficit in seven holes, birdied two of his last three holes to salvage a 73.
Right behind them are three major champions, starting with the guy who has won 14 of them. Woods recovered from a sloppy start and was three shots off the lead on the front nine until Scott pulled away. Woods missed a short par putt on the 15th and didn’t give himself many good looks at birdie on the back nine for a 70, leaving him five shots behind. Woods has never won a major when trailing going into the last round.
Three-time major champion Ernie Els was solid in his round of 68 and was six back, along with former Masters champion Zach Johnson, who had a 66.
Even so, the biggest challenge might be the weather. If the forecast holds true, the greatest defense of links golf could finally arrive with wind projected to gust up to 25 mph.
“It will be in Adam’s hands tomorrow if the conditions are as straightforward as they have been the last few days,” McDowell said. “Throw a bit of wind across this course like perhaps they are forecasting, he will have to go and work a lot harder, and he will have to go win it.”
McDowell was seven shots back at the 13th green and found three birdies coming in to get into the last group, just as he was at Olympic Club last month in the U.S. Open, where he was one putt away from forcing a playoff.
Snedeker opened this championship by playing 40 holes without a bogey, and then he couldn’t buy a par. He had to blast backward out of a bunker, chunked a pitch shot from the fairway, missed short putts and was reeling.
Snedeker rolled in a birdie on the 16th and stretched out his arms in mock wonder, then finished with a birdie that could bode well for today.
“It’s just one of those things where you’ve got to find out if you have some guts or don’t,” he said. “I could have packed up and gone home today, but I didn’t.”
Scott was becoming a forgotten star until he switched to the long putter in February 2011, and it has been the biggest reason for the turnaround — his runner-up at the Masters last year, winning his first World Golf Championship at Firestone, and now on the cusp of his first major.
Showing nerves on the opening tee, he hit into a bunker and played a beautiful shot from the back of the wet sand to 8 feet, holing the putt for par. Scott made another par putt from a similar distance on the third hole. And in the middle of his run of birdies — including a 30-foot putt on the eighth — he escaped with par on the 10th hole by holing an 18-footer.
He played it safe on the back nine, giving himself a few good looks, but mostly making sure he didn’t get into position for big numbers.
“That’s what I felt I needed to do,” Scott said. “I didn’t need to take any risks out there.”
Scott is poised to become the first Aussie since Greg Norman in 1993 to get his name on the claret jug.
But this has been a tough year for 54-hole leaders. Five players have rallied from deficits of at least six shots to win, a peculiar trend that Snedeker started at Torrey Pines in January with a victory over Gig Harbor’s Kyle Stanley.
“A four-shot lead doesn’t seem to be very much this year on any golf tournament that I’ve watched,” Scott said. “That doesn’t mean a lot. The good part is if I play a solid round of golf tomorrow, it will be very hard for the others to beat me, and that’s all I’m thinking about.”
It’s best that he not think about how his fellow Aussies have fared. Scott is the fourth Australian to have a 54-hole lead in a major dating to the 2007 Masters. None of the others – Stuart Appleby, Aaron Baddeley and Norman – left with the trophy.
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