The 36-hole lead of 9-under was not advanced on moving day, overnight co-leaders Corey Lamb and Will Florimo both posting 1-over 73 to drop back to 8-under and open the door for Tighe to move clear.<\/p>\n
Three-under on his round after back-to-back birdies at nine and 10, Tighe made two bogeys of his own at 11 and 13 but finished with five straight pars for a round of 1-under 71 and a one-stroke advantage.<\/p>\n
Round 3 takeaways<\/p>\n
Fighting through illness, Will Florimo dropped three shots late to fall from 11-under to 8-under<\/p>\n
PNG amateur Morgan Annato delivered the low round of the day, 5-under 67, and will start the final round tied for 15th<\/p>\n
Lincoln Tighe\u2019s last win on the Challenger PGA Tour of Australasia was the 2014 NSW PGA Championship<\/p>\n
Lamb and Florimo will start Round 4 in a five-way tie for second, Brisbane\u2019s Gavin Fairfax (68) and Round 1 leader Joel Mitchell (68) drawing to within one of the lead with two of the better rounds in hot conditions on Saturday.<\/p>\n
It has been 11 years since Tighe claimed the NSW PGA Championship at Riverside Oaks in north-west Sydney, the 35-year-old eager to make the most of his latest opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would mean a lot at the moment,\u201d said Tighe, who was top three three times during the 2022-2023 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, I sort of had new things in my life. I had my little boy come along. It\u2019s been great to have him and support my wife, and she supports me when I\u2019m away so a win would be great.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been in this position a fair few times. Learning from those things and sort of channelling back to my win at New South Wales PGA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can do that, I\u2019ll be around the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n
While renowned as one of the longest hitters on tour, it was Tighe\u2019s putter that played a critical role both early and late in his round.<\/p>\n
He rolled in a 20-footer for birdie at the par-3 second and then holed a putt from just outside 20 feet for par after finding the narrow hazard with his tee shot at the par-4 18th.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hit a really good drive down there. I hit one 15 metres out yesterday, and I thought that was the exact same drive,\u201d said Tighe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t get the bounce \u2013 which I didn\u2019t \u2013 obviously it went in the half-a-foot hazard, which was a bit tough. But to get up-and-down, that was great.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know where I was coming. I just sort of tried to keep my head down and keep going. So to make that putt was great.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trio of consecutive par 5s from the eighth hole again played an important role in reshaping the leaderboard on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Tighe birdied two of the three, Fairfax birdied all three as part of a five-hole birdie blitz while Mitchell bounced back from back-to-back bogeys at six and seven with consecutive eagles at eight and nine.<\/p>\n
Playing in his seventh national championship, Morgan Annato will have the support of the PNG crowd on Sunday as he seeks to better his previous best finish, a tie for 38th in 2023.<\/p>\n
Winners on tour last season, Jordan Doull (68) and Ben Henkel (69) will start the final round just two strokes off the lead alongside Andrew Campbell in a tie for sixth, Jack Munro (71) and Jake McLeod (69) tied for ninth at 6-under.<\/p>\n
Saturday also saw the historic first round of the inaugural PNG Women\u2019s Open, Coffs Harbour\u2019s Amelia Mehmet-Grohn (73) one stroke clear of Western Australian Kathryn Norris with Kristalle Blum, Elmay Viking and PNG amateur\u00a0Margaret Lavaki tied for third.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 36-hole lead of 9-under was not advanced on moving day, overnight co-leaders Corey Lamb and Will Florimo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-74231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}