VIRGINIA WATER, England \u2014 The European stars in line to compete in the upcoming\u00a0Ryder Cup\u00a0are being upstaged at the high-profile BMW PGA Championship by a player who will be one of the team’s vice captains.<\/p>\n
Alex Noren, a Swede who will be among Luke Donald’s five assistants at Bethpage Black, rolled in a 17-foot putt at No. 18 to complete a birdie-birdie-eagle finish and join Adrien Saddier in a tie for the third-round lead at the European tour’s flagship event.<\/p>\n
Saddier, a Frenchman ranked No. 120, birdied three of his last four holes for a 7-under 65 and Noren, the 2017 champion, shot 66.<\/p>\n
At 15-under 201, they were two strokes clear of Tyrrell Hatton, who shot 64 and was the best-placed of the\u00a011 Ryder Cup players\u00a0taking part at Wentworth this week to begin the buildup to the Sept. 26-28 matches. A stroke further back was another, Viktor Hovland, after his 71 left him in fourth place.<\/p>\n
Of the other Ryder Cup players, Ludvig \u00c5berg (73) and Matt Fitzpatrick (69) were tied for sixth on 10 under.<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy was down in a tie for 53rd on 5 under after shooting 70 and has been unable to back up the form he showed in\u00a0winning the Irish Open\u00a0last week.<\/p>\n
Tommy Fleetwood, the recent FedEx Cup winner, shot 71 and was 3 under for the tournament.<\/p>\n
Hideki Matsuyama and Justin Rose, who were first and tied for second, respectively, after 36 holes, dropped out of contention after shooting 76 for the joint-worst rounds of Saturday.<\/p>\n
Noren knows how to win at Wentworth, having shot a final-round 62 to take the title eight years ago, and is finishing the season strongly. Two weeks ago, he won the British Masters for his 11th European tour victory \u2014 and first in seven years \u2014 and he was tied for third at the Wyndham Championship in early August.<\/p>\n
His impressive recent form wasn\u2019t enough to earn a captain\u2019s pick for the Ryder Cup but he might be about to beat many of the stars with whom he\u2019ll share the European team room at Bethpage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be so much fun,\u201d Noren said, looking ahead to the final round. \u201cI love this.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Saddier, he led after three rounds of the Irish Open, only to close with a 74 and finish tied for fifth. He is back with a shot at a second title of 2025 \u2014 after the Italian Open in June \u2014 and the biggest win of his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it will be another day at the office,\u201d Saddier said. \u201cJust focus on myself and my game. Try to hit a lot of fairways and greens, and we\u2019ll see if the putts drop tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VIRGINIA WATER, England \u2014 The European stars in line to compete in the upcoming\u00a0Ryder Cup\u00a0are being upstaged at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-142856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}