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The leader board cratered. The number of players under par went from 23 at sunrise to nine by the end of the third round, on a Country Club course already hard enough with its blind shots and wee greens. The lead at 4 under par eventually went to two guys whose 67 — for Will Zalatoris — and 68 — for Englishman Matt Fitzpatrick — came off as remarkable.
“Yeah, it was brutal,” Zalatoris began anyway.
“Yeah, I put my sun cream on before the round,” Fitzpatrick said, “and I was thinking, ‘Oh, it’s going to get nice and warm,’ but quite the opposite by the end of the day,” when it looked like a sky from Sheffield, Fitzpatrick’s hometown.
Players had ebbed and flowed and ebbed and ebbed. Defending champion Jon Rahm came in at 3 under after a commendable 71 but the kind of No. 18 that turns up in those bad dreams where you just can’t get somewhere. Masters champion Scottie Scheffler, Adam Hadwin and New England guy Keegan Bradley rode winding roads to 2 under. Hip pick Sam Burns, second-round co-leader Joel Dahmen and four-time major champion Rory McIlroy hit 1 under, McIlroy with a cavalcade of one-putts that signaled chronic inconvenience. Second-round co-leader Collin Morikawa derailed to a 77 and 2 over and gone.
“It’s just so easy to compound mistakes out there,” Zalatoris said after a Saturday filled with mistake-compounding.
Surely Scheffler, pristine old 25-year-old Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, could provide some calm.
Wait, maybe he could, somewhat.
When Scheffler stood 101 yards out on the fairway on No. 8 and shipped a beaut to the green and when it landed and spun backward and plunked in for an eagle, he had reached 6 under and a two-shot lead. He parred two more holes to keep that status.
By No. 14, his floor had fallen through clear to 1 under, including a double bogey at No. 11, a par-3 where his tee shot went off the left up next to the area where the lawn mowers dare not venture, and his recovery from there went up the hill and decided to stop, still shy of the green. When he followed that hole with three straight bogeys, only the cruel couldn’t understand.
By the end, he had rebuilt things to 3 under.
“There’s a lot of trees on this golf course, and it’s gusty as well,” he said. “So it’s definitely unpredictable. That’s what happens when you get these kind of foresty golf courses, and then with the gusts, I mean, that little golf ball is just getting thrown around all over the place.”
The leader for a late while at 5 under, second-ranked Rahm, reached No. 18 looking smooth. Well, he did have that moment on No. 8 when he had to backhand a grounder out of the craw of a tree. And he did have that approach on No. 13 that landed 30 yards behind the pin, whereupon he said: “For crying out loud, man. What a freaking day.”
But he had skill, and he had know-how, and then on the very last hole he had ugh. He went into a bunker straightaway and line-drived his exit from that bunker into the little bunker wall, which sent it back. Then he flew one out of there, only to find another bunker, where the diabolical ball dove deep.
He made a double-bogey 6 and walked off at 3 under feeling suboptimal, even if he did laugh through a TV interview soon thereafter.
“It’s a good round of golf,” he said after that, and his 71 made that unarguable. “Obviously, a lot of people are just thinking about 18. The truth is, 18, it was six good shots. Unfortunately, it added up to six, but it was all good swings.” Of his line drive — in a town that often loves line drives — he said, “Quite frankly, it was a little dark, and it was hard to see. After I hit the shot, I realized the ball was a little bit deeper in the sand than I did really truly see. But I think I got maybe — tried to be a little too perfect with the shot.”
He tried that with a terrible thought in mind: birdie.
That word became a cuss word out there on a Saturday that urged caution, as reflected in the wisdom of a pup, Zalatoris. The 25-year-old, who began life and golf in San Francisco, has become a fixture on Sunday TV screens in majors. He has played eight and wound up in the top 10 in five already. He had a strategy Saturday, and it sounded like the strategy of somebody older, as are most people.
“It took a lot of discipline today,” Zalatoris said. “I mean, we didn’t aim at a single flag even with some wedges just because you really only have a foot or two to deal with on these greens in some situations. Normally, guys out here, when they have wedges in their hand, they’re firing at pins no matter what the situation was, but it’s just a lot of patience and giving myself as many 15- to 25-footers as I could, and obviously, a couple happened to go in today, and it felt pretty good.”
They came from 52 feet, 16 feet, 19 feet and five feet, those birdies, and they came on “a pretty South San Francisco day, for sure,” he said. “Hitting 8-irons from 145 yards when for me I hit them about 175. Just the heavy air, putting on poa annua. That’s how I learned the game, and that’s how it really started for me.”
He led for a bit before Rahm did and before Fitzpatrick came to join. Both those lads played the 2013 U.S. Amateur, the only event on this course in any golfer’s memory, and Fitzpatrick won the thing at age 18, and Zalatoris spent ensuing years calling it the toughest course he ever played.
“I certainly think it gives me an edge over the others,” Fitzpatrick, the onrushing No. 18 player in the world, said of that bygone win. “I genuinely do believe that.”
Amid the gusts of Boston, it must have felt nice to believe something.
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