Herbert shot a three-under-par 69 in the third round and is \u200cat 20-under for the tournament to maintain an advantage over Bryson DeChambeau, who was at four-under Saturday and is at 17-under through three rounds.<\/p>\n
“Look, I \u200cenjoy it; I enjoy being in the lead,” said Herbert, who won in May at LIV Golf Virginia. “It’s been awesome to play with Bryson the last couple of days and \u200cget to play with him again tomorrow. It’s a great energy out there. Any time when you’re in the lead, you get good energy. I think maybe playing under pressure brings the best out of me.”<\/p>\n
England’s Tyrrell Hatton (67) was alone in third place at 15-under, while Australia’s Cameron Smith was also in superb form; his 66 leaving him alone in fourth place at 14-under.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harold Varner III (68) and Mexico’s Abraham Ancer (65) are in a two-way tie for fifth at 13-under.<\/p>\n
After scorching the JCB Golf and Country Club course with \u200can 11-under in \u200cthe opening round, Herbert was \u2060far more conservative in the third round, when he opened with seven consecutive pars. He closed the front \u200bnine with consecutive birdies.<\/p>\n
After a bogey-five at the 11th, Herbert closed with a pair of birdies over his last seven holes, including a birdie-three at 18 when he put a 132-yard second shot to within seven feet of the hole.<\/p>\n
“I am going to do my best just to stick to what I’m doing; try to make as many putts as I can,” Herbert said. “I wasn’t happy with my putting speed out there. I was a little tentative today. \u2060That’s not going to happen tomorrow. I am going to make sure I get the \u200cball to the \u200bhole and get a lot more chances.”<\/p>\n
Herbert acknowledged the challenge of trying to close out the victory against a trio of proven players in DeChambeau, Hatton and Smith.<\/p>\n
DeChambeau \u200bput himself in \u200cline for his third victory of the season, and first since March at South Africa, with five birdies and a bogey in the third round.<\/p>\n
DeChambeau’s \u200blone hiccup came at the par-five 10th hole when he sent his third shot just over the green and missed a 13-foot putt for par. He improved his round with a pair of birdies over the final three holes.<\/p>\n
“I played some good golf,” said DeChambeau, who gained a \u200bstroke \u200bon Herbert during the round. “I felt like I could have had a \u200bcouple of things go a couple of different ways, but the birdies on 16 and 17 \u200cwere huge for tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Hatton, a fan favourite for the week while in his home country, made an early charge with three birdies over his first four holes, but the run was interrupted by a bogey six at the sixth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With windy conditions expected for the final round, Hatton knows there will \u200bbe additional challenges ahead.<\/p>\n
“It’s quite quirky out there, so it’s easy to get a little bit unlucky with some of the slopes,” Hatton said. “And you don’t really \u200bhave to do too much wrong to \u2060drop shots. We’ll see how it goes. Either way, I think just focusing on my side, just trying to \u200bplay another good round of golf, whatever the weather.”<\/p>\n
Season-standings leader Jon Rahm is in a tie for 29th at two-under par.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Herbert shot a three-under-par 69 in the third round and is \u200cat 20-under for the tournament to maintain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-824520","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\/824520","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=824520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}