Sep 13, 2025, 01:55 PM ET<\/p>\n
VIRGINIA WATER, England — The European stars in line to compete in the upcoming Ryder Cup are 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>, a Swede who will be among Luke Donald<\/a>‘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<\/a> 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. Noren, the 2017 champion, shot 66.<\/p>\n At 15-under 201, they were two strokes clear of Tyrrell Hatton<\/a>, who shot 64 and was the best-placed of the 11 Ryder Cup players taking part at Wentworth this week to begin the buildup to the Sept. 26-28 matches. A stroke further back was another, Viktor Hovland<\/a>, after his 71 left him in fourth place.<\/p>\n Of the other Ryder Cup players, Ludvig \u00c5berg<\/a> (73) and Matt Fitzpatrick<\/a> (69) were tied for sixth at 10 under.<\/p>\n Rory McIlroy<\/a> was down in a tie for 53rd at 5 under after shooting 70. He has been unable to back up the form he showed in winning the Irish Open last week.<\/p>\n Tommy Fleetwood<\/a>, the recent FedEx Cup winner, shot 71 and was 3 under for the tournament.<\/p>\n Hideki Matsuyama<\/a> and Justin Rose<\/a>, 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 In-form 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 — and first in seven years — and he was tied for third at the Wyndham Championship in early August.<\/p>\n His impressive recent form wasn’t enough to earn a captain’s pick for the Ryder Cup, but he might be about to beat many of the stars with whom he will share the European team room at Bethpage.<\/p>\n “It’s going to be so much fun,” Noren said, looking ahead to the final round. “I love this.”<\/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 — after the Italian Open in June — and the biggest win of his career.<\/p>\n “I think it will be another day at the office,” Saddier said. “Just focus on myself and my game. Try to hit a lot of fairways and greens, and we’ll see if the putts drop tomorrow.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sep 13, 2025, 01:55 PM ET VIRGINIA WATER, England — The European stars in line to compete in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-143342","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\/143342","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=143342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}