{"id":510516,"date":"2026-03-08T04:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/510516\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T04:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:33:07","slug":"daniel-berger-keeps-lead-as-rain-takes-teeth-out-of-bay-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/510516\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Berger keeps lead as rain takes teeth out of Bay Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. — Daniel Berger<\/a> stopped making as many birdies even after a rain delay took some of the bite out of Bay Hill on Saturday. He still had a two-shot lead in the Arnold Palmer Invitational when darkness kept the third round from finishing.<\/p>\n

Berger was to return Sunday morning to face a 35-foot eagle putt on the par-5 16th. After watching Akshay Bhatia<\/a> get up-and-down from a bunker for birdie to close within two, Berger handed the putter to his caddie and decided to wait 13 hours before his next putt.<\/p>\n

Regardless of how the third round concludes, Bay Hill had that feeling of being a tournament again instead of the one-man show Berger had made it going into the weekend with a five-shot lead.<\/p>\n

That won’t be the case for Rory McIlroy<\/a>, who felt muscle spasms in his back and decided to withdraw about 30 minutes before his tee time. It was his first time withdrawing from a tournament in 13 years, though it was not likely to keep him from The Players Championship.<\/p>\n

Scottie Scheffler<\/a> likely shot himself out of the tournament. The world’s No. 1 player went from a bad start to an electric back nine of five birdies in a six-hole stretch, only for his approach on 18 out of ankle-deep rough to bounce off the bank and into the water.<\/p>\n

That led to double bogey and a 72, leaving what likely will be a double-digit deficit.<\/p>\n

Berger was at 13-under par — even for the round — though his two-shot lead was almost certain to grow when he returns for that eagle putt. Bhatia was 11 under with the daunting finish to come.<\/p>\n

Cameron Young<\/a> ran off four straight birdies to start the back nine on a Bay Hill course he has been coming to since he was in elementary school. That led to a 67, and he posted at 9-under 207 along Sepp Straka<\/a> (66) and Collin Morikawa<\/a>, who barely beat the darkness for his 70.<\/p>\n

Young is pure New York, having grown up at Sleepy Hollow when his father was the head pro. But the Youngs always came to Orlando for a few months in the winter, playing out of nearby Orange Tree and spending some time at Bay Hill. He remembers one year being close enough to Tiger Woods<\/a> to touch his golf clubs.<\/p>\n

But the real connection Young has is to The King. Young has an economics degree from Wake Forest, the alma mater of Arnold Palmer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I looked up at his statute going to practice every day at school,” Young said. “He had a tremendous influence on golf in general, and at Wake Forest. So yeah, it definitely is a very, very clear meaning in my head of what this tournament represents and what he represents.<\/p>\n

“It would be a huge honor to even have a chance, honestly.”<\/p>\n

Players felt like they were on two courses. Bay Hill was a brute before the round was halted for just over an hour because of heavy rain. With so little grass on the greens — dead grass, at that — pools of water formed quickly.<\/p>\n

They returned to see greens a little softer, certainly not as scary to putt.<\/p>\n

“The rain created a little bit of friction to where your ball was more rolling instead of kind of skidding is how I would describe it,” Scheffler said.<\/p>\n

Young described the difference as substantial, enough rain to make the small blades of grass stand up enough for putts to hold their line.<\/p>\n

“It went from what we know Bay Hill for on the weekend to just a notch below that,” he said.<\/p>\n

Berger traded two birdies on par 5s with a pair of bogeys when he missed the green, nothing like the golf that produced 14 birdies the opening two rounds. But he kept his wits, and kept the lead.<\/p>\n

So much depends on the putts — or putt — he takes on the 16th and the final two holes to see how the final round will shape up.<\/p>\n

Young isn’t sure it matters.<\/p>\n

“Anything can happen,” he said. “I don’t know what Daniel is going to do, I don’t know where I’m going to finish the day. But any time you get a golf course this difficult, and this many good players within a couple shots of each other … any one of them could take a really difficult golf course and make it look easy.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. — Daniel Berger stopped making as many birdies even after a rain delay took some of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-510516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510516","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=510516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}