Nacho Elvira, in his words, was all over the place on the practice range Tuesday at Dubai Creek.<\/p>\n
Four days later, the 38-year-old Spaniard, whose two DP World Tour victories have come in the last five years, is in position for his third career title on the European circuit, leading the Dubai Invitational by two shots through three rounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you would tell me I would have a two-shot lead, I wouldn\u2019t believe you,\u201d said Elvira, who shot 3-under 68 for the second straight day on Saturday to push to 8 under.<\/p>\n
Elvira\u2019s closest pursuers, Dylan Frittelli, Marcus Armitage and co-second-round leader Shane Lowry, are tied for second at 6 under. Rory McIlroy is another shot back, in solo fifth, after a third-round 68 of his own.<\/p>\n
Elvira, whose last DPWT triumph came at the 2024 Soudal Open, survived another windy day and packed leaderboard with as many as five players tying for the lead at one point. Lowry bogeyed two of his first six holes, though he settled in after that to shoot 71. If not for a lipped-out birdie attempt from 10 feet at the par-4 18th, Lowry would\u2019ve been in second alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a grind today,\u201d Lowry said. \u201cGot off to a bad start. Didn\u2019t really have it early on. A couple of really, really bad mistakes, and I just hung in there well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elvira didn\u2019t record a birdie until the ninth hole. He then added three more on the back side to build his overnight cushion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been here long enough to not be too nervous tomorrow, let\u2019s put it that way,\u201d Elvira said. \u201cI think I\u2019m going to try to enjoy and probably learn from all the experiences that I have in the past and see where that puts me. I\u2019m happy where I\u2019m at.\u201d<\/p>\n
McIlroy, though, is lurking after a round in which he notched just one bogey and didn\u2019t rinse a shot; he had four water balls \u2013 nearly five \u2013 on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was looking at this week as honestly a bit of a practice week going into the Desert Classic next week, just to shake off a little bit of the rust,\u201d McIlroy said. \u201cBut it\u2019s great to go into a final round tomorrow in contention and have a chance to win a tournament. I\u2019ve learned a lot about my game over the last three days, but I think any time that you\u2019re at the business end of proceedings on the final day, you learn a lot about your game.<\/p>\n
\u201cTomorrow will be a good day for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nacho Elvira, in his words, was all over the place on the practice range Tuesday at Dubai Creek.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-414273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}