WHILE Rory McIlroy quietly retired to corrective surgery on the practice field, Matt Fitzpatrick was racing towards some fabulous chances at the Players Championship.
The Englishman will meet here four shots behind Xander Schauffele, but with a lot of momentum behind him after a brilliant run of four birdies in his last five holes that took him to a 68 and a tie for fourth place.
For all the world, his challenge seemed dead in the woods on the fourth hole, when a double bogey dropped him off the front page of the leaderboard. Another blow landed on the sand at six o’clock buried him.
But the fightback from there was exceptional, starting with a birdie on the ninth before a blistering 31-shot drive around the back nine, illuminated by a 23-foot downhill hill to mark the signature 17th hole in two. Another long putt on the last assured him that he would have an outside chance of earning £3.5 million ($4.5 million) for the victory, although Schauffele’s bogey-free 65 makes the American the man to beat.
36-hole leader Wyndham Clark is one behind after a 70, with Open champion Brian Harman next in a high-caliber set at 15 under.
England’s Matt Fitzpatrick plays his shot from the 16th tee during the third round on Saturday.
Matt Fitzpatrick putts on the 17th green during the third round of The Players Championship
It will be a tough trio to catch, but Fitzpatrick is moving at a fast pace. It was earlier this week that he revealed that a strange equipment error had caused him to unknowingly leave weights in his driver’s handle after a failed experiment. It’s particularly interesting to note how well he’s handled the ball since that discovery and especially here at Sawgrass.
Added to his putting, the former US Open champion looks good in all departments just a month away from the Masters. “I would say this is the best I’ve driven since the US Open,” he said. “Obviously, it’s great to be able to get some of them in there as well.”
Xander Schauffele of the USA plays his third shot on the 15th hole during the third round
His outlook was much brighter than McIlroy’s after a 69. Having started with a 65, the Northern Irishman had plenty of chances here, although it all faded with his second round 73. This was at least an improvement, but at nine under par is a long way behind.
More specifically, his driving has been notoriously clumsy, forcing him to skip the media and go straight to the shooting range. In truth, it wasn’t the only aspect of his game that was unreliable; That could be best summed up by how he played the 14th hole.
By then he had birdied the second, bogeyed the next and found momentum by gaining shots on the 11th and 12th. At the 14th things got ugly: a wild drive went far to the right, his recovery did not reach the green and from there he made a touch. the putting surface to a bunker. With a 6-foot putt for bogey, he missed. He closed with three straight birdies but clearly has work to do.
In fact, the undulations of his game can be illustrated by one obvious fact: in the history of this tournament, only once has anyone made more than McIlroy’s 21 birdies in three rounds here. The fact that he is playing primarily for pride on Sunday shows how freely he allows them to fly again.
Meanwhile, Tiger Woods and the other PGA Tour player managers have been urged to meet imminently with the LIV circuit’s Saudi financiers in an effort to end golf’s civil war.
Xander Schauffele of the USA hits from a large bunker on the 16th hole during the third round
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, head of the Saudi Public Investment Fund, has made proposals to engage in talks as a way to rejuvenate the proposed merger, which appears to be circling with no end in sight.
Woods, who is on the powerful six-man board with Jordan Spieth, Adam Scott, Patrick Cantlay, Webb Simpson and Peter Malnati, is rumored to be reluctant to negotiate with the Saudis after the Tour secured a $3 billion partnership of dollars with Strategic. Sports Group (SSG). But Scott wants those six political council players to at least listen to the Saudis.
He said: “Given the seriousness of what we are voting on, I think it is important that we all come together, no matter what everyone’s feelings are.”
Malnati has become the first political board member to question whether the players now have too much power. He said: “I think we’ve almost swung the pendulum too far in the other direction now after what happened on June 6 (the merger announcement), where the players were left in the dark.” “The players probably feel like they have more input than we should.”